Suicides top war and murder but little being done: expert

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

MONTEVIDEO (AFP) — While death from war, terrorism and homicide crowd the headlines, at more than a million deaths per year suicide outstrips them all, but gets scant attention, an expert warned Wednesday.

The president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), Brian Mishara, said with global suicide rates on a steady rise in recent decades, societies must commit more resources to help bring the numbers down.

"There are more than one million people who die by suicide each year in the world, which is more people than those who die from war, terrorist attacks and homicides every year," Mishara told AFP.

"So more people kill themselves than are killed by other people."

Global suicide rates have increased by 60 percent over the last...