Alarming increase in the rate of suicide among women

Australia's peak suicide prevention body is reporting an alarming increase in the rate of suicide among women, and says they are increasingly using more violent methods to take their own lives. 

Suicide Prevention Australia has also drawn attention to a doubling in the rate of self-harm among young women in little more than a decade.

About 2,500 Australians take their own lives every year, and while 75 per cent of deaths from suicide are men, more women are attempting to take their own lives.

Suicide Prevention Australia will tomorrow release a report, titled Suicide and Suicidal Behaviour in Women - Issues and Prevention, that shows a 10 per cent increase in deaths for each of the past three years.

Chief executive Sue Murray said while the focus on men's suicide was critically important, women's suicide had largely been ignored.

"We need new investment, greater investment and more targeted programs that will address suicide as a gender issue," she said 

Ms Murray said a disturbing trend uncovered in the report was an increase in women using more violent methods to take their own lives.

"Therefore we're seeing an increase in the number of deaths every year," she said.

The report's author, Susan Beaton, said she believed it was the first serious examination of women's suicide in the world.

"I was staggered at the number of policy documents and strategy documents that really had very little, sometimes no commentary at all, about women's suicidal behaviour," she said.

Ms Beaton said much of the increase came from young women.