Mental illnesses common cause of death

Most people in Germany die of cardiovascular disease, followed by cancer. People are dying more and more frequently of mental disorders.

28/11/2014

Cardiovascular diseases continue to rank first among the leading causes of death in Germany. This is reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Thursday in Wiesbaden. More than 350,000 people (39.7 percent) died last year because of a disease of the cardiovascular system such as heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. „92 percent of those with cardiovascular disease were 65 or older“, informes Destatis. Place two of the most common causes of death were cancer. Around one quarter of the deaths involving around 220,000 people in 2013 were attributable to malignant tumors. Increasingly, "mental disorders" are stated as the cause of death.

Number of deaths in Germany has increased by 2.8 percent
An increase of 16 percent compared to 2012, the statisticians recorded in the mental and behavioral disorders. In 2013, 36,117 people died of such a disease, with 80% of those deaths causing dementia as the cause of death.

„3.8 percent of all deaths were due to a non-natural cause of death such as injury or poisoning (34,133 deaths)“, it says in the message from Destatis. 10,842 people lost their lives through a fall, 10,076 committed suicide, with the proportion of men who chose to commit suicide is at 73.9 percent, almost three times as high as the proportion of women (26.1 percent).

Overall, the number of deaths last year increased by 2.8 percent compared to 2012. (Ag)

Image: Dieter Schütz