Suicide prevention focuses on a package of measures. These include kinder fairer societies as a long term measure. I don't know anyone working in suicide prevention in England who isn't deeply aware of the wider determinants of mental ill health. (And I know a lot of people working in suicide prevention).

But the package of measures also includes "preventing access to means and methods". This is because we know it makes a difference. We have some natural experiments to show this: changing the domestic supply of gas from coal gas to natural gas caused a substantial decline in deaths: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478945/

Changing cars to have catalytic convertors also caused a decline in deaths.

People get caught up on this. They say "merely making it harder to buy paracetamol isn't addressing the root causes, you need to do that". They're right, but they're missing the point that this is supposed to be a package of measures that also looks at why people attempt suicide.

Is it of questionable utility?

I don't think it's a waste to look at the data and see if certain methods of suicide really stand out. It doesn't seem unreasonable to see if (this is a gross way to phrase it but here we go) easy and efficient methods of suicide are associated with more suicides. My gut instinct would say that having easy access to handguns would be associated with more suicides, as it's (relatively) more reliable than an intentional drug overdose.

Does the data here reflect that? I am not a statistician, but what's shown actually makes me question my priors. The US has a huge difference in suicide by gun rates, but the overall suicide rate isn't all that different from European countries. And, this actually surprised me, the male-to-female suicide ratio in the US isn't much different than other countries, which really makes me question my prior that "guys have handguns and thus have an easier way to commit suicide".

In practice, this makes a noticeable difference; it's why you can't buy paracetamol in significant quantities in the UK, why the suicide rate fell when the UK switched from toxic coal gas to natural gas, and so on.

Suicide motivation is usually understood as "depression", but antidepressants aren't entirely reliable in this case. It's very hard to reach inside someone's head unless they're willing to tell you. Neither of the two people I knew who killed themselves left notes. Both were on antidepressants.

For example, men were more likely to shot themselves and women were more likely to poison themselves. Also, women were less likely to die from suicide, but more likely to attempt it.

The means matter.

It has huge policy implications. Some people push gun controls because of it, or install fences at bridges and subway stations that can cost in the billion dollar range.

Well, saying that without knowing the impact on outcomes doesn't make sense.

Anyway, the focus usually reflects org structure. Solutions match org structure. If you make a Suicide Reduction Squad, they will not be able to "ensure that all children have education" to reduce suicide, they can only chase methods. After all, it's the Education Increase Squad that makes sure children have education.

There is the hypotheses that rush suicides can happen when your home has a gun or some quick way of ending your life.

There will be hard to study this theories as long as an industry is involved and politics.

I have no idea how can you use statistics from other countries and get the correct conclusions, we probably need the data from people that canceled their suicide and compare the number of gun owners and non gun owners.

Since suicides can often be impulsive and not premeditated, if you can reduce the access to the method, you can reduce the number suicides.

Motivation is harder to categorize and collect. It also assumes someone in investigating the root cause and recording it.

Well the pie chart with possible mental illnesses had some stuff in that direction.