Study after study, warnings about the mental health of young people have multiplied, with increased hospitalizations and emergency room visits for suicide attempts − particularly among young girls − serving as indicators in recent years. This focus has sometimes overshadowed another trend: The number of people who die after a suicide attempt has remained relatively stable since 2020, after a steady decline since the mid-1980s.
In 2022, 9,200 people died by suicide in France, bringing the crude rate to 13.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants – compared to 13 in 2021 and 13.1 in 2020 – according to the latest figures released by the French National Suicide Observatory in February 2025. The decline, which continued for 35 years, now appears to be “slowing,” noted the Observatory, which hypothesized that a “floor level” was reached around the start of the 2020s (except a rebound in 2018, attributed mainly to improved data collection).
Broad trends have remained unchanged: Men (6,925) are three times more affected by suicide than women (2,275), the Observatory reported, with rates per 100,000 inhabitants of 20.8 for men and 6.4 for women, respectively. While public attention has shifted toward adolescents since the Covid-19 pandemic, suicide rates actually increase with age, rising from 2.7 per 100,000 among those under 25 to more than 35 per 100,000 among people aged 85 and older.
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