Suicide mortality rate is one of the 74 Sustainable Goal Indicators that do not yet have an established compilation methodology (PSA, 2021) in the Philippines. It is important to measure suicide so that evidencebased policies and interventions to reduce premature deaths due to suicide can be crafted. This paper describes the development of the methodology for measuring the suicide mortality rate based on causes of death as reported in the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system. Records with suicide as the underlying cause of death were extracted from all the recorded causes of death that occurred in 2015- 2019. While the analysis results showed that suicide mortality rates in the Philippines are generally lower compared to the world’s average, it is still a cause of concern because the lower rates are due to the substantial measurement errors, the resolution of which could significantly increase the mortality rates. The World Health Organization has rated the Philippines’ CRVS database to be 97-100% complete and 78-85% usable, which implies that at most 22% of the reported deaths have codes that are vague or that are impossible as underlying cause of deaths, which are indicative of measurement errors. Although there are measurement errors in the computed suicide mortality rates, the trends of these rates are still evidence that the incidence of suicide is more prevalent in the younger age groups. Based on age-standardized rates computed for 2015-2019, the suicide mortality rate among males is about four times higher than that among females. The suicide mortality rate of the 15–24-year male group has been steadily increasing from 2015 to 2018. Similarly, the rate for the 15-24 female age group has been increasing since 2015, while the rates of the other female age groups declined in the two most recent years with data. It is also worth noting that the suicide mortality rate among the male elderly (65 and older) is not low, although not as high as those of the younger groups. Seventy-two percent of the suicide deaths happened at home. The method of more than 80% of the reported suicides is hanging. These results can be considered in crafting and monitoring public health policy. Recommendations on how to further enrich the analysis and reduce the measurement errors are also discussed in the paper.

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