PISA Performance and Adolescent Suicide Mortality Across Countries: A Multidimensional Indicator Analysis

Every nation wants its young people to succeed. Governments invest heavily in schools, hoping to produce students who can read complex texts, solve difficult problems, and understand the world around them. At the same time, societies care deeply about the mental health and happiness of their teenagers, hoping to see them grow into adults who feel their lives are meaningful and worth living. For a long time, policymakers have often treated these two goals—academic excellence and student well-being—as separate tracks, assuming that a country could focus on one without necessarily harming the other. But what if these two goals are more deeply connected than we thought? What if the very systems that produce the highest test scores also create conditions that make some young people more vulnerable to the most severe forms of distress?

This question sits at the intersection of education and public health, two fields that rarely speak the same language. Educational researchers look at test scores to measure how well a school system is working, while health officials look at mortality rates to understand how safe a population is. Usually, these numbers move in different directions; when one goes up, the other might stay the same or go down. However, a new study suggests that for teenagers, the relationship between high academic achievement and severe health outcomes is more complicated. It challenges the simple idea that doing well in school is always good for a young person's life, and it suggests that the way a country organizes its education might matter just as much as the grades themselves.

A researcher at Leipzig University set out to explore this connection by looking at data from 43 different countries. The study focused on three specific things: how well 15-year-olds performed on international tests in science, reading, and mathematics; how many teenagers aged 15 to 19 died by suicide; and how satisfied those teenagers felt with their lives. The researcher did not ask students how they felt or what they thought about their schools. Instead, they looked at hard, national records. The test scores came from the Programme for International Student Assessment, a global exam that compares student skills across the world. The suicide data came from official death records, representing the most severe possible outcome of mental health struggles. The life satisfaction data came from surveys where teenagers rated their own happiness on a scale from zero to ten. By comparing these three distinct measures across many nations, the researcher could see if countries with the smartest students also had the safest or the most unhappy teenagers.

The results revealed a surprising pattern. On average, countries with higher test scores also had higher rates of suicide among teenagers. This was not a perfect rule, and it did not happen in every single country, but the trend was clear enough to be statistically significant. The connection was strongest for reading scores, followed by science scores, and was weakest for mathematics. In other words, nations where teenagers were best at reading tended to have the highest rates of teen suicide. This finding does not mean that learning to read causes suicide. Instead, it suggests that the environment in which these high scores are achieved might be the key factor. It is possible that the same educational systems that push students to achieve the highest levels of literacy and knowledge also create intense pressure, competition, or a sense of being trapped for those who struggle.

To make sure this pattern was not just a result of some countries being richer than others, the researcher adjusted the data to account for national income and child poverty. Wealthier nations generally have better schools and better healthcare, so one might expect that money would explain the link between test scores and suicide. However, when the researcher controlled for these economic factors, the connection between high test scores and higher suicide rates actually became stronger. This means that money alone cannot explain why some high-achieving countries have more teen deaths than others. The link appears to be something specific to how education is organized and experienced in those places, rather than just a side effect of poverty or wealth.

Despite this average trend, the study found that the outcome is not inevitable. The researcher identified five countries—the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Germany, Sweden, and Italy—that managed to combine above-average test scores with below-average suicide rates. These nations proved that it is possible to have high academic performance without a high rate of teen suicide. However, when the researcher looked at how happy the teenagers in these five countries felt, the picture became even more nuanced. While Lithuania and Sweden had high test scores, low suicide rates, and high life satisfaction, the United Kingdom and Germany had high test scores and low suicide rates but lower levels of life satisfaction among their teenagers. This shows that even when a country avoids the worst outcomes, it does not automatically mean its young people are flourishing. A country can protect its teenagers from death while still leaving them feeling less satisfied with their lives.

The study concludes that we cannot look at a single number to understand how well a nation's young people are doing. High test scores tell us what students can do, but they do not tell us how they feel or how safe they are. The fact that high achievement and high suicide rates often appear together suggests that the pressure to perform might be a hidden cost of certain educational systems. It implies that the methods used to raise test scores—such as intense competition, strict ranking, or high stakes for failure—might be contributing to the distress of some teenagers. The research does not say that we should lower our expectations for students. Instead, it suggests that we need to look at how we help students reach those expectations. Systems that support students with strong teaching, early help, and multiple ways to succeed might be able to produce high scores without the same level of psychological harm.

Ultimately, this work serves as a reminder that education and mental health are not separate issues. They are woven together in the daily lives of teenagers. By looking at test scores, death records, and happiness surveys all at once, we get a fuller picture of what is happening in our schools and our societies. The data suggests that the path to a successful education system is not just about raising scores, but about ensuring that the journey to those scores does not come at the expense of a young person's life or their sense of well-being. The countries that manage to balance these goals offer a glimpse of what is possible, showing that high achievement and a healthy, happy adolescence can coexist, but only if the conditions that produce them are carefully examined.