(Python) Suicide Rate Analysis - EDA

csgreene9
Dec 17, 2022
2 min read

Catherine Greene | December 2022

This analysis was prompted by the MIT IDSS Data Science and Machine Learning Certificate Program. If you or someone you know is in crisis and needs immediate help, tell someone who can help right away. Call 911 for emergency services, go to the nearest hospital emergency room, or call or text 988 to connect with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Context

Close to 800 000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. Suicide is a global phenomenon and occurs throughout the lifespan. Effective and evidence-based interventions can be implemented at population, sub-population, and individual levels to prevent suicide and suicide attempts. There are indications that for each adult who died by suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide.

Data Dictionary

We will be using the dataset about suicide rates from 1985 to 2016. This dataset has the following attributes:

country: Country

year: Year

sex: Sex (male or female)

age: Suicide age range, ages divided into six categories

suicides_no: number of suicides

population: population of that sex, in that age range, in that country, and in that year

suicides/100k pop: Number of suicides per 100k population

gdp_for_year($): GDP of the country in that year in dollars

gdp_per_capita($): Ratio of the country’s GDP and its population

generation: Generation of the suicides in question, being possible 6 different categories

Questions to explore

Is the suicide rate more prominent in some age categories than others?

Which countries have the most and the least number of suicides?

What is the effect of the population on suicide rates?

What is the effect of the GDP of a country on suicide rates?

What is the trend of suicide rates across all the years?

Is there a difference between the suicide rates of men and women?

Observations

Suicide rates are more prominent in the 35-54 years age group. The 15-24, 75 +, and 5-14 years age groups all have below-average suicide rates.

Russian Federation and Lithuania have the highest suicide rates with totals of 1209742 and 1034013 respectively. The countries with the lowest suicide rates are Saint Kitts & Nevis and Dominica with totals of 0 each.

Looks like higher suicide rates are a bit more prevalent in countries with higher GDPs. However, it doesn't look like there is any significant correlation between the two.