2024 Data Confirms First Decline in Suicides in Spain in Over Half a Decade

Provisional data on suicide deaths in 2024 provided today by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) is encouraging. The absolute figure, 3,846 deaths by this cause last year in our country, is dramatic, yet it holds a very positive element as it confirms the downward trend in suicides that began a year earlier. 2023 marked the first decline in such deaths in over half a decade, and the 2024 data points to a possible end to the persistent rise in suicides recorded in Spain over the last decade and a half, which was further accelerated by the personal and social shock triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The 2024 figures reveal that in those twelve months, 3,846 people took their own lives in our country, which is 106 fewer than in the same period in 2023, which was already the first year of decline, with 145 fewer suicides than in 2022. The rate of reduction in suicide deaths in Spain over the last two years is steady at approximately 3% each year.

This is the first halt in the chain of increases in suicides since 2016, with the only exception (decline) in 2018. Despite the end of the expansive trend, deaths by suicide in our territory remain a significant issue, as they fluctuate between ten and eleven daily deaths. The typical Spanish suicide victim is male. Men account for 74% of adult deaths by this cause, but among children and adolescents up to adulthood, gender differences are quite small.

The combination of the decline in suicides and the notable increase in deaths from accidental falls, 4,407, meant that in 2024, for the second consecutive time in fifteen years, suicides were not the leading cause of death by external causes (those not linked to illness), but the second. Suicides had been the leading external cause of death since 2008, the year they surpassed deaths caused by traffic accidents, which remain today at half the rate.

The great concern of Spanish society over the increase in suicides in the last decade, especially among the young, explains why the Council of Ministers approved on June 3 to allocate nearly 18 million euros to the autonomous communities to begin implementing the actions agreed upon in the first national suicide prevention plan.

Among the main lines of action that the Ministry of Health's grant aims to finance is the reform of emergency services in general hospitals to improve accessibility and acceptance of people in mental health crises, as well as to create community prevention devices aimed at people with identified risk and patients with serious illnesses or chronic pain who present suicidal vulnerability.

At the same time, 024, the free 24-hour hotline for suicide prevention, has received over 370,000 calls from direct victims or their relatives in its first three years of operation. This amounts to nearly 125,000 calls for help annually and about 340 on average each day.