Suicide
Ethnic differences
The rate of suicide among young Māori appears to be consistently higher than that among non-Māori.
The three-year moving average youth suicide death rate for Māori in 2003–2005 was 33.2 per 100,000 compared with 14.6 for non-Māori.
Suicide death rates for Māori are based on small numbers, so it is difficult to interpret trends over time.
| Year | Males | Females | Total | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Māori | Non-Māori | Māori | Non-Māori | Māori | Non-Māori | |
| 1996-1998 | 55.5 | 35.8 | 19.8 | 11.1 | 37.5 | 23.6 |
| 1997-1999 | 49.9 | 33.6 | 20.0 | 10.9 | 35.0 | 22.5 |
| 1998-2000 | 47.3 | 29.5 | 16.8 | 9.6 | 32.2 | 19.8 |
| 1999-2001 | 40.5 | 28.5 | 14.2 | 8.4 | 27.5 | 18.6 |
| 2000-2002 | 40.9 | 25.2 | 14.2 | 7.1 | 27.6 | 16.3 |
| 2001-2003 | 38.7 | 22.8 | 18.5 | 8.2 | 28.6 | 15.6 |
| 2002-2004 | 43.8 | 20.1 | 20.8 | 8.4 | 32.3 | 14.4 |
| 2003-2005 | 46.1 | 21.4 | 20.3 | 7.4 | 33.2 | 14.6 |
Source: Ministry of Health, New Zealand Health Information Service. 2005 data is provisional.
Notes
We encourage you to be cautious about drawing conclusions from comparisons between ethnic groups. Apparent differences (in unadjusted data) between ethnic groups can often be explained by factors other than ethnicity per se, such as the different age, sex, geographical and socioeconomic distributions of different ethnic populations. In addition, datasets vary in the way that they collect and record ethnicity data.
