It always strikes me how many young patients I admit to the hospital with a suicide attempt or overdose. Most of my patients come with drug overdose (opioids and benzodiazepines being the most common) and occasionally I see a self inflicted gun shot wound (see image above). Most of these patients do Ok and eventually discharged. What surprises me is how different my personal experience from the official statistics. According to the National Institute of Mental Health most suicide methods in male are by firearms (56%), second being suffocation (23%) and poisoning (most commonly seen in my practice) is only in 13%. The statistics is quite different for the female population with poisoning being most common (40%). Still, this is very different from what I see in my practice. Reviewing suicide statistics by state, age etc did not explain this discrepancy. One likely explanation is that the “success” rate being different for any given suicide method and thus the difference.