I was reading about a couple people who died from what was clearly suicide but officially was not classified as such. There is a reported suicide rate, but I was thinking, what about all the times someone takes pills and doesn’t leave a note, it would be usually classified at a accidental overdose, or a heroin addict who OD’s intentionally, or someone who drives into a tree, none of these would be classified as a suicide. And in the UK they have causes of death like “misadventure” and “open verdict” that they often apply in cases that could be suicide, muddying the water even further. I know it’s impossible to give a exact figure but if the suicide rate is 20 per 100,000 people in the US, what do you think is the real suicide rate if undocumented cases like the above mentioned things are included?
I don’t know how you would make the determination, but one thing to take into consideration is that the “unreported” aspect can go the other way, particularly in the case of celebrities. You often hear a death from drugs/alcohol/prescription medications or some lethal combination described as a suicide, only to have either officials or people who knew the deceased later say that it was clearly an accident. And I’m aware of plenty of cases where someone survived driving into a tree or a similar accident, and later explained that it really was an accident and they had no intention of killing themselves. It might depend some on the culture, and how much suicide is stigmatized.
You also have celebrities deaths that were clearly suicides and are not classified as such for publicity purposes, like Jimmy Hendrix and Keith Moon for example.
See: Some coroners 'under-report cases of suicide' | Irish Independent
I would guess that the difference is immaterial across the entire population.
I would expect that Ireland, with its strong ties to Catholicism, would be one of the places that most heavily stigmatizes suicide.
What makes you think that Jimi Hendrix or Keith Moon were suicides? It’s certainly possible but there’s no way based on the evidence to say they were “clearly suicides” as you claimed.
A rough estimation could probably be generated by the following method:
40% of people are A
20% of people are B
10% of people are C
The remaining 30% are unknown
Well, based on the information available to us, it’s most probable that the unknowns are split evenly among the knowns. So 4/7ths will be A, 2/7ths B, and 1/7th C.
Say for example the records I have indicate that 80% of people are killed by flinging into outerspace and 10% of people are driven into the center of the Earth. There’s another 10% that I know died but I don’t have exact records of their death. Well, clearly the best guess would be a 8:1 split.
Things are a little more complicated in your example since you have both “unknown” and “misadventure” and only some categories can reasonably go into either of these, and you’ll have to decide which and how reasonable those assignments are. But, it should give you a better-than-nothing approximation.
There is a condition called ‘subtle suicide’ which means you don’t care if you live or die, but you are not actively trying to kill yourself. Read the book ‘the heroin diaries’ by Nikki Sixx for a decent example. Sixx expressed suicidal impulses, but by and large he expressed those suicidal urges by not taking care of himself and doing dangerous things.
So a lot of deaths by misadventure or drug OD could just be people who don’t care if they live or die, which is arguably a form of suicide. You end up running into lots of problems because you cannot know a person’s motives.
Keith moon was found with over 30 undigested sedative pills in his stomach, meaning he swallowed even more before he died. Jimi hendrix swallowed a handful of sleeping pills with alcohol after writing a suicide note, and his friends at the time described it as a suicide.
Keith Moon also took horse tranquilizers because he thought he was capable of handling it. He took doses of other drugs that would have killed mere mortals, and had a history of making bad choices with horrendous amounts of drugs. He was certainly full of self-destructive behaviors, but that’s not the same as suicide.
The so-called suicide note was a several page long rambling poem with no explicit mention of suicide, that’s never been made public (as far as I know.) Eric Boudon, who wasn’t all that close to Hendrix, was the one who found the poem and made the claim. There’s no evidence that it’s a suicide note, or that people who were closest to Hendrix thought it was suicide.
Stories like this are why deaths without clear intent are no listed as suicide.
**What is the real “unreported” suicide rate? **
You’d have to do something like the Drake Equation, only for suicides rather than extraterrestrial civilizations. Don’t laugh. I’ve seen it done for theoretical production of methane by a managed landfill. You divide the problem into factors that you don’t know and then try to gather evidence as to the magnitude of those factors.
S (actual suicides) = [R (reported suicides) X f(k) X f(m) X f(t)] - [R (reported suicides) X f(oo) X f(h) X f(i)]
f(k) = fraction of death certificate signers that will, out of kindness, never say suicide unless absolutely forced to
f(m) = fraction of signers that find it hard to be sure about suicides unless it’s really obvious
f(t) = fraction of suicides who were really tricky and made it look like an accident
f(oo) = fraction of unlucky folks who had an accident that looked like suicide
f(h) = fraction of people murdered by evil bastards who made it look like suicide
f(i) = fraction of signers who have a tendency to think it’s suicide (there have to be a few out there)
Now different studies can be done to try to find the orders of magnitude for f(k) through f(i) for different areas and times and we can start to guess what S might be. Feel free to add more factors.
Probably highest among very old people, where death is often attributed to “old age” and no post-mortem performed. My mother unsuccessfully attempted suicide when she was 98. If that was suspected by anyone, there is no mention of it in her medical records. I know that she did, but I would never tell anyone. Evidence of such things is often quietly overlooked.