I mean the Koreans are a close second, which is fair enough. And Poles and Russians, obvs. But Sri Lanka I don't really get.
We're not even in the top ten.
Sri Lanka: 35.3
South Korea: 32
Poland: 22.3
Russia: 20.1
Japan: 19.7
India: 17.9
France: 16.9
Thailand: 16
United States: 14.3
Argentina: 14.2
Germany: 13.4
Canada: 12.3
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.