Key Points

• Emergency Department Activity:

  • Data on emergency department visits for suicidal behavior (or suicide attempts) are difficult to analyze in the Île-de-France region. Nevertheless, trend analysis shows that the proportion of suicide attempts (SA) in emergency department activity in 2020 and 2021 remained below pre-pandemic levels, except among young women aged 11 to 24. The number of visits for suicide attempts remained higher among women (66%) and increased in 2020 and 2021. Emergency room visits followed by hospitalization for suicide attempts had decreased between 2017 and 2019, but the trend reversed in the second half of 2020 and continued through the first half of 2022: in the Île-de-France region, 60% of visits were followed by hospitalization.

  • A sharp increase in emergency department visits for suicidal ideation in the second quarter of 2020: 6.3 times more visits among 11- to 17-year-olds and 3.7 times more among 18- to 24-year-olds between 2017–2019 and 2020–2021. These high visit rates persisted into 2022, suggesting a long-term deterioration in mental health. With a sex ratio of 0.5 in 2020–2021, the gender gap was much more pronounced in the Île-de-France region than at the national level (sex ratio of 0.8).

• Hospitalizations for suicide attempts:

  • Annual hospitalization rates declined steadily between 2010 and 2019 for both men and women. With an age-standardized hospitalization rate for suicide attempts of 91 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 (n=9,915 hospitalizations for suicide attempts), the region was well below the national rate, which was 152.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019. These hospitalizations primarily involved women (63%), particularly young women aged 10 to 19 (rate of 206.4 hospitalizations per 100,000).

  • The proportion of women hospitalized for suicide attempts increased in 2021 (but not in 2020): 67% in 2021 versus 63% between 2017 and 2019. While the 25–64 age group still accounted for the largest share of hospitalizations, the percentage had dropped from 60% in 2017–2019 to 47% in 2021, with a very clear shift toward the 10–24 age group, which accounted for 29% of hospitalizations for suicide attempts in 2017–2019, compared to 33% and 43% in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

  • Two more violent methods of suicide attempts had increased in 2020 and 2021: suicides involving sharp objects (8.7% vs. 12.1% in 2020 and 14.3% in 2021) and suicides by jumping from a height (2.7% in 2017–2019 vs. 2.1% in 2021, p=0.02).

• Suicide mortality:

  • In 2017, 710 people residing in Île-de-France committed suicide, and 70% of them were men (n=499). With a standardized rate of 7.2 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants (half the national rate: 14.4 per 100,000 inhabitants), Île-de-France appears to be the region with the lowest suicide rate in metropolitan France, among both men and women.

  • Among those under 30, the proportion of suicides among the total number of suicides in Île-de-France (12.1%) is higher than the figure for metropolitan France (8.2%).

  • Suicides among young adults aged 20 to 29 account for 10% of mortality in this age group in Île-de-France (6.7% in metropolitan France). It is also in Île-de-France that the proportion of suicides among women shows the greatest discrepancy with metropolitan France as a whole (8.7% in Île-de-France vs. 5.8% in metropolitan France).

  • Jumping from a height is the second most common method of suicide (16.6%) in the Île-de-France region and the most common among all metropolitan regions, as this method ranks fifth (6.3% of total suicides) in metropolitan France. This method of suicide is also very common among women (24.1%), just ahead of drug overdose (24.1%).