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Verbatim report of proceedings
Monday, 4 July 2005 - Strasbourg OJ edition

One-minute speeches on matters of political importance
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  Gay Mitchell (PPE-DE). Mr President, approximately 58 000 people die each year in the European Union as a result of suicide or self-inflicted injury. This figure is far higher than the number of people killed in traffic accidents. The Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection published a paper last year on the state of mental health in the European Union. One of the important points to emerge from the research was that, with the exception of Ireland, the elderly have the highest suicide rates in the population. Suicide rates increase with age.

Since the number of people who reach old age is increasing, the absolute number of suicides is expected to rise. We know that the majority of suicide cases are linked to mental health, particularly depression. One might also think that there would be a relationship between suicide and major economic factors such as unemployment and poverty levels. The Commission’s paper acknowledges that, even though standardisation of most mental health instruments has been completed through many studies, definition of mental health states is one of the most difficult tasks. Therefore it is always difficult to interpret any differences.

Would it now be prudent to establish a central European register for suicide cases so that an EU-wide analysis of data could take place? We could thus try to identify the causes and trends of this terrible phenomenon and see which Member States’ best practice could be benchmarked in the other Member States.

 
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