Fact Sheet - Suicide Prevention

[ Press Release 2012-02 ]

Suicide rates in Canada

  • Every year approximately 3,700 people in Canada commit suicide – a national rate of 11 in 100,000 people.
  • Suicide rates are five to seven times higher for Aboriginal youth than for non-Aboriginal youth. However, rates vary widely among Aboriginal communities, and factors such as language and culture retention are seen as important factors in preventing suicide.
  • Suicide rates for among Inuit youth are among the highest in the world at 11 times the national average.
  • Boys and men commit suicide at a rate three to four times greater than do girls and women.
  • Many of these deaths could be prevented by early recognition of the signs of suicidal thinking and appropriate intervention, and early identification and effective treatment of mental illness.

Gathering the best evidence on suicide prevention

To help improve the effectiveness of suicide prevention efforts, the Government of Canada is launching an initiative to support teams of researchers that will rapidly gather and distill the global evidence on suicide prevention and that will produce this knowledge in a readily accessible format.

The initiative will be carried out under the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Evidence on Tap program. CIHR will launch a request for applications in January 2012. Research teams, pre-qualified through the Evidence on Tap program, will be invited to submit applications that focus on synthesizing evidence in one or more of the following areas:

  • School-based approaches to suicide prevention
  • Community-based approaches to suicide prevention
  • The active role that media (e.g., print, television, Internet) can play in preventing suicide
  • Interventions that target populations at especially high risk for suicide (e.g., sexual minority youth, those with mental health or substance use disorders, Aboriginal peoples, the elderly, inmates, military, police and emergency responders)
  • Gender specific ways to recognize emotional distress and to intervene early in the lives of boys and men

The funding available for the initiative is $300,000, which will support three teams with grants of $100,000 each. The successful teams will be selected in April 2012. They will have six months to carry out their work. They will be required to submit a report with their findings to CIHR and to hold a workshop with stakeholders. For more information, consult the CIHR website.