This is true. And in communities around the world where suicide is stigmatized, there is heavy pressure on authorities to record deaths as “accidental” rather than suicide. In fact, this is borne out by statistics in which you see higher rates of death attributed to accident in such communities, once you control for other variables. This is especially the case in societies in which there is social shunning of entire families who have lost someone to suicide. The coroner in these communities may worry with good reason about serious mistreatment of families if there is a public record of suicide. It’s also not unreasonable to think that this misreporting may play into the gender divide in suicides. If different sexes tend to use different methods, some of these methods are much more ambiguous and easier to record as an accident than others.
I’m not talking about the general trend of more men committing suicide than women. I just think that the specific ratios for different countries might not be that accurate.
Considering various social taboos around suicide, I’m not sure how reliable such data is.
Counting corpses is pretty reliable, objective data.
Provided the cause of death gets reported truthfully
This is true. And in communities around the world where suicide is stigmatized, there is heavy pressure on authorities to record deaths as “accidental” rather than suicide. In fact, this is borne out by statistics in which you see higher rates of death attributed to accident in such communities, once you control for other variables. This is especially the case in societies in which there is social shunning of entire families who have lost someone to suicide. The coroner in these communities may worry with good reason about serious mistreatment of families if there is a public record of suicide. It’s also not unreasonable to think that this misreporting may play into the gender divide in suicides. If different sexes tend to use different methods, some of these methods are much more ambiguous and easier to record as an accident than others.
Could you elaborate on what angle you’re coming from? It’s a trend on worldwide scale, social taboos can hardly be a reason for much inaccuracy.
I’m not talking about the general trend of more men committing suicide than women. I just think that the specific ratios for different countries might not be that accurate.