This study documented three noteworthy results. First, we provided estimates of the 12-month prevalence of suicidal behaviors among adults (18+ years-old) in 21 countries. A recent review of studies on the 12-month prevalence of suicidal behaviors reported widely-varying estimates found in prior studies.2 The estimates obtained in the current study were in the lower end of these ranges for each suicidal behavior. This was most likely the result of two features of our study: we used conservative items for the assessment of each suicidal behavior (e.g., presence of suicide ideation required that a person have “seriously” thought about committing suicide rather than having merely “thoughts of death” as in some prior studies), and we used large representative samples of respondents from the general population (i.e., rather than small selective samples that may be at higher risk for suicidal behaviors, such as young adults or those in a clinical setting). Although it has been suggested that suicidal behaviors may differ between developed and developing countries,51, 52 consistent with our prior report on the cross-national lifetime prevalence of suicidal behaviors1 we found
