The Self-Destruct Examination; An Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) on the Global Burden of Suicide

Introduction:

For every person who successfully took their life, hundreds have tried but failed. World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the global suicide rate to be about 700,000 yearly, of which 77% of global suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries. Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among 15-19 year-olds, a global affliction that spares no age range.

This analysis seeks to investigate the world’s data set on suicide and furnish insights to provide an outlook that could help combat suicide.

The questions we sought to answer are:

1. The total number of suicides
2. The countries with the highest suicide rate
3. The continent with the highest suicide rate
4. The suicide rate per year
5. The gender with the highest suicide rate and
6. The suicide rate by age group

Data and Model:

Data Scraping: Two separate data sets were analyzed. One containing the suicide rate from 1985 to 2016, was obtained from kaggle.com. From worldpopulationreview.com, we retrieved the other data that had the countries and continents. The datasets were imported into PowerBI and then transformed with the power query.

Data Cleaning: Unwanted Columns were removed and the DAX function was used to extract the Continent from one table to another with the Lookup Value Formula.

Data Visualization:

1. The total number of countries analyzed, the total number of suicides and the population examined were reported on cards
2. The years and the genders were visualized in a slicer to allow the use of filtering.
3. Visualizing the top 5 Countries with the highest number of suicide was done using a bar chart
4. The line chart was used to show the rate of suicide over the years
5. A bar chart was used to show the suicide/100k, in the top 5 Countries
6. A column chart was used to report the age group by suicide rate
7. The suicide rates of each gender were shown using a donut chart
8. A table was used to elucidate the continents by suicide number, GDP per capita, and population

Result:

Conclusion:

Over 7miliion suicides were recorded from 1985 to 2016, about three (3) decades. The suicide rate peaked in 1999 at a total of 256,119 after which the rate remained somewhat constant.

The Russian Federation was ranked first with the highest number of people that committed suicide which was 1,209,742 individuals. Other countries are the United States, Japan, and France. It is also notable that Europe had the highest number of suicides though she has the highest Per Capita GDP compared to other continents.

The percentage of suicides committed by males was 76.89% compared to 23.11% in females. More men take their lives than women do. The age group 35 - 54 years has the highest number of suicide with 2,452,141 suicides. The age group 5 - 14 years had the least number of suicides.

Suicide is a global menace, a public health problem having a lasting effect on individuals, families, and communities. Though debilitating to people and societies, it is preventable.

Strategies to prevent suicide include creating connectedness in communities, strengthening economic support and household financial security, strengthening access and delivery of suicide care, reducing access to lethal means among persons at risk of suicide, identifying people at risk, providing support, and teaching coping mechanisms.

The strategies should be targeted at men between the ages of 35 to 54 years in Europe as they top the at-risk population.

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