Do we need to be cautious in evaluating suicide statistics?

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Abstract
Misclassifications result in under-reported official suicide data. Under-reporting varies across countries. Chishti1 looked at the 1984–98 mortality of suicide and undetermined causes in the European Union (EU) countries. Similar to suicide rates, undetermined causes were lowest in Mediterranean countries, and lowest in Greece. However, Portugal had the highest rate of undetermined causes, and only here this rate exceeded the suicide rate. Belgium, Germany, Ireland, and Spain had a significant neg-ative correlation between suicide rates and undetermined causes. Finland, Greece, The Netherlands, and Sweden had positive correlations, and no significant correlations in the remaining countries. The rates of suicide plus undetermined causes did not differ in the course of time, when compared with suicide rates, except in Spain where the 17% significant increase in suicide mortality (1984–98) decreased to only 8% with the combined rates.

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