DUBLIN, Ireland: According to a Central Statistics Office (CSO) report, suicide ranked as the leading cause of death among individuals aged 15 to 34 in 2020.

The report revealed that out of the 504 people who died by suicide in 2020, 366 were men, and 138 were women, marking a decrease from the previous year's total of 538 suicides.

While suicide was the most frequent cause of death among those aged 15 to 34 in 2020, it also accounted for a significant number of deaths in the 65 and older age group, with the proportion remaining relatively stable over the years. A total of 537 individuals in the 15 to 34 age group died in 2020, with 146 of these deaths attributed to suicide.

Sen O'Connor, a statistician in the CSO's vital statistics section, said the cause of death in different cohorts of people "provides very different trends".

"There were 74 deaths of males aged 20 to 24 years in 2020, and 43.2 percent of these were due to suicide. This was the highest proportion of deaths due to suicide by age cohort for males," he said. "A similar pattern was seen for females, where nearly four out of every 10 (39.1 percent) deaths occurring to females aged 20 to 24 was due to suicide."

Over the years, men have consistently represented the largest share of suicide deaths. However, the proportion of suicides among women increased from 18.8 percent in 2012 to 27.4 percent in 2020.

The report's data spanning from 2012 to 2020 revealed that the highest number of suicide deaths (585) occurred in 2012, followed by 2014, with 578 suicides. In contrast, 2015 had the lowest number of suicide deaths in that period, with 500 recorded.

In 2020, more than 20 percent of all suicide deaths took place in the Dublin region, with a similar distribution among both males and females. Conversely, the midlands and southeast regions had the lowest shares of suicide deaths, accounting for 8.5 percent and 8.3 percent of the total, respectively.