Change points in Australian suicide rates: Trends from 2000 to 2022.

Objective: There is concern that suicides in Australia have been increasing, especially among young women. Our aim was to describe the long-term trends in suicide rates, identifying any change points among all suicides and among age-sex population groups.

Method: We extracted annual Australian suicide data from 2000 to 2022 from the General Record of Incidence of Mortality. We used join point regression to model change points in age-standardised suicide rates over time for the total population, males, females and for eight age-sex strata.

Results: Age-standardised population suicide rates declined by 4.4% per year (95% confidence interval: -6.1 to -2.6) between 2000 and 2005 and then rose by 2.0% per year until 2018 (95% confidence interval: 1.4 to 2.5). No change was observed after this. Similar patterns were observed for males and females. When disaggregated by age and sex, a more complex picture emerged. Suicides declined in the early part of the century for some groups but not others. Most age-sex groups experienced an increase in suicides from the mid-to-late 2000s. Suicides declined between 2020 and 2022 for 15- to 24-year-old men by 16.0% per year (95% confidence interval: -24.0 to -7.4). In all other age-sex groups, suicides either plateaued or continued to rise.

Conclusion: The broad trends in suicides observed in the total population and in males and females mask more complex patterns occurring in some age and sex groups. Understanding these long-term patterns is critical to informing interventions to reduce suicide.