Happiness Index Revisited

I was talking to someone recently about the Subjective Well Being or Happiness Index of a country (saying that Denmark came out with the highest SWB value) and she pointed out that Denmark had a high suicide rate. So after I bit of investigation I found the following suicide rates for countries I have been comparing up to now. In order to compare my selected countries with that of the highest suicide rate in the world I have added Lithuania into the comparison chart below. So Denmark has a relatively high suicide rate but much less than the highest countries in the world.

In general male suicides outnumber female suicides by a multiple of 3, 4 or 5. For example, in the US males successfully complete suicide at a rate of 4 times that of females. However, females attempt suicide more than 3 times more often than males. Men tend to use firearms and are therefore more successful at suicide whereas women tend to go for an overdose option which often leads to recovery. Here are the comparison charts for men and women.

Looking at the countries with higher suicide rates it tends to be those with colder climates (e.g. Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Slovenia and Alaska has the highest suicide rate in the US) but I could not find any studies that link cold climates with suicide rates. Surprisingly, most suicides happen in the spring time usually peaking in May and June in the northern hemisphere (November and December in the southern hemisphere).