Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
I know. I mean their cricket team isn't what it was, but suicide would seem a bit of an extreme reaction.

Could it be post-war-related?
Ah, it's cobblers apparently.

It’s a widely-held belief that Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of suicide in the world: the World Health Organization (WHO) actually ranks Sri Lanka’s suicide rate as the highest.

But researchers who study suicide say there’s a big catch: the data is wrong.

“It’s disregarding that there’s actually been a drop in Sri Lanka’s suicide rates and that’s a problem,” said Dr. Dee Knipe, a professor at the University of Bristol, speaking in Colombo last week.

To standardize and compare data from around the world, the WHO uses mortality data and puts it into a model. But Sri Lanka last submitted data to the WHO in 2006. The organization’s current numbers are projections based on that past submission.

More local data tells a different story. Numbers compiled annually by the Sri Lanka Police’s Division of Statistics show that the suicide rate has actually fallen by 70 percent since the mid-1990s.

That would put Sri Lanka’s suicide rate closer to the 22nd highest in the world, rather than the first.