This is a serious topic. Here it is shown as population data and research, with no detail about methods. If any of it brings up something hard for you, the Help tab and the bar at the bottom are always one tap away.
Understanding suicide deaths in India
Each of these is a person, and each death touches a family, friends and a community. This app helps you see who is affected, where, why, how India compares with the world, and what works, one step at a time.
India has about 18% of the world's people but about 24% of its suicide deaths.
1 · Press Next → to go one page at a time, or ☰ to jump to any page.
2 · Press buttons, drag sliders, tap legends and map tiles. Everything moves.
3 · Tap dotted words for a plain meaning, and i on a number to see its source.
4 · ▶ plays the pages like a story. 🔊 reads a page aloud. ⚙ has the language (हिंदी/मराठी), large text, calm mode and dark mode.
Is it rising or falling? It depends on who's counting.
Police numbers (NCRB) went up after 2018. But large household surveys say the real rate has been slowly falling. Both can be true: police are now recording more of the deaths that were always happening.
How many suicides police missed, compared with the Million Death Study survey:
If India's suicides were 100 dots
Each dot stands for about 1,700 people a year. Choose a lens and watch the dots regroup. Tap a legend row to light up just that group.
Shares are not risks. Daily wage earners are 31% of deaths partly because there are so many of them in the workforce. And police write down one reason per death. Real lives usually have several pressures at once, and mental illness is often missed.
Women: India's most distinctive pattern
In most rich countries men die by suicide at about three times the rate of women. India's gap is much smaller, and India alone accounted for over a third of the world's female suicides in 2016.
Pressures named in Indian research:
Changes that may be helping:
An ageing India
Today, older people are a small share of suicide deaths in India. But India is ageing fast. If the risk for each age stays the same, there are simply more older people at risk. Projection
In the Million Death Study, men aged 70+ had a rate of about 30 per lakh, among the highest of any group. Smaller families and children moving away for work may leave more older people alone. Speculation
South Korea and Japan show a pattern that is older, more male, and linked to isolation and poverty in old age. India's profile could shift that way. Pensions, community care and screening in old-age clinics are the levers.
Where in India?
This is a tile map: each square is a state or UT, placed roughly where it is on the map. Tap a tile. Dashed tiles are states this app has no figures for yet.
Darker = higher.
The social lens: Durkheim's map
In 1897 the sociologist Émile Durkheim said suicide rates rise when a society holds people too loosely or too tightly. That can mean too little or too much belonging (integration), or too few or too many rules (regulation). Move the sliders, or try a preset.
Balanced
Inside the home
How many times more likely a housewife was to die by suicide (CMHLP analysis of NCRB data):
This fits a patrilocal family system, where the newest member of the household often has the least power.
Students
"Exam failure" is recorded for only 1.4% of all suicides. Academic pressure usually builds up over time, and a one-reason form can't capture that. In 2025 the Supreme Court issued 15 binding guidelines for schools, colleges and coaching centres and set up a National Task Force. Caste discrimination on campuses is a recurring concern, but NCRB publishes no caste data at all.
The medical picture
About 10.6% of Indian adults had a mental disorder at the time of the national survey (NMHS 2015–16). That is roughly 15 crore people who could use care. Most don't get it.
Of 10 people with the condition, how many get no treatment? (treatment gap)
Solid = treated · dashed = untreatedDirect central spending on mental health vs the whole health budget:
Depression and alcohol use disorder are major, treatable risk factors. Substance-related suicides rose to 7.6% of recorded cases in 2024. Psychological-autopsy studies usually find mental illness in most suicides, yet police record it as the reason in only about 8%. The District Mental Health Programme and India's National Suicide Prevention Strategy are the main public responses.
From ancient ideas to modern law
Indian traditions never had a single view. Tap a diamond, or drag the slider, to travel through time. Watch how the frame changes.
India and the world
Age-standardised rates per 1 lakh (WHO 2021; US from CDC 2024). Switch the view and watch the ranking reshuffle.
| India | Rich countries (typical) | |
|---|---|---|
| Peak ages | Young adults, 15–39 | Middle & old age |
| Women's share | High (men:women ≈ 1.3) | Low (≈ 3.2 : 1) |
| Key means to restrict | Pesticides | Firearms (US), medicines, heights |
| Main setting | Rural, at home | Mixed / urban |
| Data quality | WHO rates it "very low" | Generally high |
Cut suicide deaths by one-third between 2015 and 2030 (SDG 3.4.2).
The best-proven lever: restricting the most toxic pesticides
Many suicidal crises are brief. If the most lethal means isn't within reach, many people survive the moment. This is called means restriction. Sri Lanka proved it on a national scale.
This is a teaching model, not a forecast. It covers bans on highly hazardous pesticides. Change the assumptions and watch the bar split.
Build a prevention plan
You are the health minister. You have 100 coins. Spread them across programmes and see how many lives a year your plan might save. Each programme has diminishing returns, so the first coins do the most. Teaching model
Future lab: India 2024 → 2047
Speculation Push the levers. This simple model shows how policies and pressures from population science, economics, climate and politics could bend the curve. It is a way to think, not a prediction.
Number tools: rates made simple
A rate per 1 lakh lets you compare places of different sizes.
Two towns have the same risk at every age: young people 10 per lakh, older people 30 per lakh. Slide how old Town B is.
Quiz: test what you've learned
Myth or fact? Tap a card to flip it.
Talking and writing about suicide safely
How suicide is reported matters. Sensational stories can raise risk for vulnerable readers. Stories about coping and getting help can lower it. WHO's media guidelines summarise what helps.
If you or someone you know is struggling
How India counts suicide deaths
Four systems produce four different numbers. Tap a pipeline to follow it.
Stigma and family pressure to call a death an accident or illness. Police and insurance incentives. Families avoiding medico-legal procedures. Dowry-linked deaths coded as homicide or burns, or the reverse. Only about 7 of India's ~10 million deaths a year are registered, and fewer than 2 million have a medically certified cause.
Data, fact sheet & sources
NCRB data come from police, list one cause per death and miss many deaths, especially of women and in northern states. WHO and GBD figures are modelled, and WHO rates India's data as "very low" quality. Claims about climate, social media and urbanisation rest on contested evidence. The calculators, game and future lab are teaching tools.
- NCRB, Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2018–2024 (via SPIF, CMHLP, The Wire)
- Million Death Study, PLOS Global Public Health
- India State-Level Disease Burden Initiative, Lancet Public Health 2018
- GBD 2021 India trends, Lancet Regional Health SE Asia
- WHO global suicide estimates 2021 (IASP summary)
- Women's suicides, CMHLP
- Carleton, crop heat and suicide, PNAS 2017
- Pesticide bans, Undark; Kerala bans, study
- NMHS 2015–16 summary, PARI library
- Psychiatrist shortage, ThePrint
- Supreme Court on student suicides, SC Observer
- China's decline, decomposition study
- US data, CDC NCHS
- Mental Healthcare Act 2017, overview; NSPS 2022, explainer
- Tele-MANAS, explainer