[father_of_two]

Not being an expert on the subject, I think the trend is to have a progressive increase rate in suicides along the age. I don't know where this 40s figure comes from.

http://goo.gl/j7pOgc -- this is a study about suicide in Portugal and Spain. If you look at "Figura 13" (suicide by age on men) and "Figura 14" (suicide by age for women), that pattern is clear (they even explicitly mention it on the text as a classical pattern).

Eurostats data ( http://goo.gl/UyTqtE ) features a similar pattern, although it seems they lack a few age groups!