Steep Growth in the Number of Suicides in Hungary

The number of suicides saw a big jump in Hungary in 2020: 1,706 people took their own lives, compared to 1,550 in 2019. This is a 10% increase, the highest since the change of regime, the news site 444.hu reports.

Beforehand, there were annual increases of 2-3% at most, for example in the 1990s and the second half of the 2000s, but the situation has been improving over the long term.

Three times more women and 153 more men committed suicide in 2020 than in 2019. For men, this represents an increase of 13%, while for women it is less than 1%.

"It's as if another 'contagious disease' has emerged, which is gender-specific," said György Szekeres, the would-be president of the Hungarian Psychiatric Society, who has only hypotheses as to what might be behind this phenomenon. He thinks it is possible that in families where traditional gender roles are followed, men who have lost their jobs because of the crisis and who have been breadwinners, have found it harder to make ends meet.

But to support this, it would be necessary to see the age distribution of suicide victims, which has not yet been published, the news site notes.