Mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community” (WHO, 2001). While the aforementioned represent the ideal condition, WHO data indicates that one in every eight people in the world lives with a mental disorder. Available estimates indicate that 77% of all suicide deaths occur in low-and-middle-income countries, which are the most populous parts of the world. The OECD iLibrary article, “Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2023”, in its pre-pandemic analysis of mental health, documented the following; When analyzing figures before the pandemic, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for mental health disorders per 100,000 population for LAC33 countries were 1,815 on average. Countries like Brazil, Guyana, Chile, Paraguay, and Suriname had over 2,000 DALYs for mental health disorders per 100,000 population. Regarding deaths by suicide, LAC31 countries experienced 7.4 deaths per 100,000 population on average in 2019, below the OECD average of 9.9 deaths per 100,000 population. Only Guyana, Suriname, Uruguay, Haiti, and Cuba had deaths by suicide rates above the OECD average, with Guyana showing 40.9 deaths by suicide per 100,000 population in 2019. Countries like Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines had less than 2 deaths by suicide per 100,000 population in 2019. For males in Guyana, the suicide rate is consistently high across all age brackets. Male suicide in Guyana far outpaces that of Guyanese females. In a study done by Quinlan-Davidson, et al, 2014, the key finding was;
The average suicide rate for young people (10-24yo) in the Americas was 5·7 per 100,000. Males die by suicide at higher rates (7·7/100,000) than females.