OTTAWA (CP) - Immigrants are much less likely to take their own lives than native-born Canadians, suggesting they may have coping mechanisms that could be copied by society in general, experts said Monday.

The new study by Statistics Canada found the suicide rate among newcomers was roughly half that found in people born here, shedding light on an often-taboo subject. Analysts say the findings raise new possibilities for suicide prevention.

The study, which used data from the World Health Organization and Canadian Vital Statistics, found that just more than 13 out of every 100,000 people born in Canada committed suicide annually from 1995 to 1997.

That's an average of 3,328 per year when figures are adjusted for different age patterns.

In contrast, only about eight newcomers out of every 100,000 people took their own lives in that same period - an average of about 535 suicides annually.

The numbers are lower still for immigrants living in one of Canada's three biggest cities -Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver - where they may find strong ethnic ties and a sense of community support.

"The presence of ethnic communities in these cities may have something do with the relatively low rates," said Eric Caron Malenfant, author of the StatsCan study.

Strict religious taboos have prevented many suicides among Muslims, said Halim Amini, an Afghan immigrant in Toronto.

But that still wasn't enough to prevent his 23-year-old son Sabawoon from throwing himself in front of a Toronto train almost two years ago.

Amini talks openly about his son's depression and trouble getting professional help. He hopes it will encourage other immigrants to open up about the issue and demand better mental health care.

"My son wasn't the first one and he won't be the last," said Amini.

"But when I began to talk about my son. . .so many other people opened up and I was shocked to see how many other people are suffering. And the help is just not there."

Broad studies of suicides generally have found that a key factor in prevention is strong social networks which foster a sense of belonging, said David Masecar, president of the Edmonton-based Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.

"The stronger the community, the stronger the ties and those are protective factors against suicide," Masecar said in an interview.

While that's valuable, immigrants appear to have other protective factors against suicide which policy-makers should study as they design a national suicide prevention strategy, said Masecar.

"If there are things that immigrant populations are coming with, protective factors, we should try to look at that and understand it better," he said.

"It's important not only to understand why people die by suicide but also what are the protective factors that keep them from the option of suicide."

Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are home to about 60 per cent of immigrants to Canada. Those centres saw an average 6.3 suicides per 100,000 immigrants.

Outside those major metropolitan areas, the immigrant suicide rate rises to 10.3 per 100,000, still well below the native-born rate but higher than in cities where immigrants may be greeted by strong ethnic communities.

Immigrants seem to face stronger cultural and religious taboos against suicide, said Karen Letofsky, executive director of Distress Centres of Toronto.

In contrast, efforts in Canada to bring the topic out of the closet may be misconstrued as societal acceptance of suicide.

"Somehow, in speaking of suicide, has the message of trying to save people been transformed into a message of legitimization?" Letofsky asked.

Immigrant suicide rates in Canada are closely influenced by rates and trends in the immigrants' countries of birth, the study found.

Rates varied considerably by birthplace. People from in Oceania and Europe had relatively high rates, whereas those from Africa and Asia had the lowest rates.

Gender also made a difference.

Among the Canadian-born, men are about four times more likely to kill themselves than women.

The gap between immigrant men and women was much narrower, which also reflects trends in their home culture.

Immigrant men and women may share feelings of being dislocated from their past, their homes, families and everything that's familiar.

Some immigrants may have fled the fear and violence of war and genocide, horrors that ultimately drive them to take their own lives.

The report also found age differences.

Among people born in Canada, suicide tends to be a phenomenon of the young.

But the study said the opposite is true in most other countries and is reflected in the fact that suicide rates among immigrants rise with age.

Despite these differences between newcomers and native-born Canadians, both groups share one major contributor to suicide: economic troubles, says Peter Crosby of the Family Service Association of Toronto.

For immigrants, that often stems from a lack of decent jobs, difficulty having professional credentials recognized or even finding training for new jobs.

"Economic status is one of the principal determinants of health and that includes mental health," says Crosby.

"If you have an immigrant community that's disproportionately poor, you're going to have mental health problems."

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