A quick sweep of the lowest 20 countries in suicide and the most obvious thing that can be teased out is they're by vast majority extremely conservative societies where family and religion (mostly Islam) would likely dominate the goals of any person living there (with a couple exceptions). Only about half of the lowest 10 have any sort of functional welfare or state support programs.

I wonder if having a pretty rigid, straightforward, and achievable set of life goals lowers suicide. This isn't to say that's the best way to live, but I could understand how it may make people more satisfied with their life.

I think its very hard to draw conclusions. The country with the lowest rate is majority Christian and AFAIK is not extremely conservative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

A second list on that page gives different numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

In between is a table that shows the suicide rate is much lower in "upper middle income" countries than in either poorer or richer countries. I suspect that is a pointer. Affluent enough not to be constantly struggling, but different in some ways (urbanisation? materialism? isolation?) from the rich countries.

You also need to look at other factors. Conservative countries have younger populations, so you need to correct for that. Not all countries have equally accurate statistics.

I think conservative countries may have an advantage because of larger families, extended families, fewer people being single (and less isolated if they are) etc. but it needs more data. There are some pretty conservative countries with high rates.

There's a very real risk that data from conservative societies, which often see suicide as shameful, is underreporting the actual level. If a family is going to be looked down on if one of its members kills themselves, there's a strong motivation to attribute the death to another cause if at all possible.

Suicide is not an attractive option if you believe that you'll be eternally punished for it in the after life.

To guess that people in countries with lower suicide are more satisfied is one possibility.