Ninety-nine adults in their 30s died by suicide in Singapore in 2024, up from 66 the year before; a rise of 50%, even as deaths declined across every other age group.
A year ago, provisional data put this group’s figure at 75, and suggested suicides overall had fallen to 314.
The final counts, released in July, are 99 and 441, respectively. Consequently, reporting on the national trend reversed from a 2.5% decline to a 1.6% increase.
A similar revision occurred the year before.
These fluctuations largely reflect deaths still awaiting a coroner’s finding, and publishing provisional figures remains the right thing to do as timely data matters for prevention.
But every number is a life, with a bereaved family behind it. Best practices therefore often revolve around how uncertainty is communicated.
Source: Rayner Tan and Anthea Ong
Australia, for instance, releases coroner-certified deaths as preliminary, revised and final counts, with analyses of how much figures typically move; the UK reports registration delays alongside its quarterly numbers.
Singapore could similarly contextualise its provisional releases; at the very least, provisional and final figures should not be compared as though they are equivalent.
This is why “Value Data and Research” remains a pillar of S.A.V.E L.I.V.E.S, the national suicide prevention strategy proposed in Project Hayat’s White Paper, launched on World Suicide Prevention Day 2024.
While these statistics have dominated coverage of the latest figures, it is also an invitation to reflection on what this means for our ongoing suicide prevention efforts.
Source: Rayner Tan and Anthea Ong
We must resist constructing a single explanation from aggregate figures alone.
What we know from SOS’s own helplines is that those in their thirties are most often presented with pressures of family responsibilities, work and social isolation.
The thirties can be a period of intense role strain.
Many are simultaneously establishing careers, servicing housing and financial commitments, sustaining relationships, raising young children and caring for ageing parents.
All of this under strong social expectations of what adulthood and success should look like.
There can be a painful gap between the life someone expected to have by this age and the life they find themselves living.
This can come in the form of job insecurity, burnout, debt, caregiving demands, relationship breakdown, loneliness, a loss of identity, among others.
For someone who appears outwardly established, it can feel harder to admit to struggling, or to believe they are “allowed” to struggle.
Indeed, in SG Mental Health Matters’ public consultation this year on the National Mental Health and Well-Being Strategy, conducted with research firm OPPi, fewer than half of working respondents felt it had become easier to discuss their own mental health at work without fear of negative consequences.
Source: singaporestockphoto on Unsplash. For illustration purposes only.
Suicide prevention cannot be reduced to psychiatric treatment or individual resilience.
Not everyone experiencing suicidal distress has a diagnosed mental illness. We must also examine the relational, workplace, financial and social conditions surrounding a person’s life.
This is to ensure that people can reach support before a crisis becomes acute.
The same public consultation found exactly this gap: that most respondents were willing to seek help through general practitioners (GPs) or polyclinics.
However, only just over half trusted they would receive appropriate support, citing long waits, past dismissals, and fears about privacy and judgment.
This is, after all, a generation fluent in the language of mental health.
They came of age as awareness campaigns took hold. But fluency has not translated into felt safety in the places where their lives actually unfold.
Closing that trust gap matters as much as generating safe and reliable spaces to promote mental health and wellbeing.
This includes workplaces where disclosing a struggle is not a career risk, primary care that responds quickly and confidentially the first time someone reaches out, and support that is not contingent on a diagnosis.
Source: Rayner Tan and Anthea Ong
It is worth noting that the lives that we have lost in 2024 reflect years of experiences, pressures and support, or the lack of it.
This begs the question of what ecosystem of care they grew up and lived through.
The median age of those who died is now 48.5 and the highest since 2017, suggesting risk may be shifting further into adulthood, though younger Singaporeans are not therefore safe.
Suicide remains the leading cause of death among those aged 10 to 29.
Taken together, these figures tell us that Singapore needs a life-course approach to suicide prevention: in schools, workplaces, families, primary care and communities.
Particular attention has to be paid to ensuring that such efforts are adapted accordingly to priority populations who are facing greater stressors in life along the lines of age, gender and sexuality, race, occupation, and roles.
Every suicide is an individual tragedy. Taken together, the trends are a mirror held up to society.
Not only does it invite us to improve crisis intervention, but it also asks what conditions help people find life liveable long before they ever reach one.
If there is one lesson these figures keep teaching us, it is that preventing suicide is not only about responding better in moments of crisis.
It is about building a society in which more people experience belonging, purpose and hope.
That is why Singapore needs a comprehensive National Suicide Prevention Strategy that brings together government, healthcare, schools, workplaces, communities and people with lived experience.
And it is why each of us has a part to play in helping those around us know that they matter.
Anthea Ong is co-lead of Project Hayat, founder of SG Mental Health Matters and WorkWell Leaders, a certified leadership coach and former Nominated Member of Parliament.
Rayner Tan is co-lead of Project Hayat and SG Mental Health Matters, and an assistant professor at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
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Featured image adapted from Rayner Tan and Anthea Ong. For illustration purposes only.