#AfricaCheckFellowship: Does Lesotho really have the ‘highest suicide rate in the world’? Only if you rely on ranking data the WHO warns against

Pearl Letsoela, psychotherapist and coordinator for the Lesotho’s mental health programme, said that the ministry could “neither refute nor validate” the claim that Lesotho had the world’s highest suicide rate.

“We are conducting our own suicide situational analysis with WHO support to understand the true picture,” she said.

Letsoela explained why accurately capturing suicide data was difficult. 

“A complete suicide is not reported at the psychiatric hospital but certified at general hospitals, and even then, it’s often coded clinically, not as suicide. For instance, if someone ingests poison or hangs themselves, the cause may be recorded as respiratory failure or blood loss,” she said.

Letsolea confirmed that the ministry only recently developed data collection tools to “single out suicide” in hospital reporting. These cases were previously tallied under “Other Psychiatric Conditions”.

In contrast, countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan record every death with a legally verified cause, allowing a “direct count”. But Lesotho, like many low- and middle-income countries, still lacks such complete or consistent civil registration systems.