The evaluation of national suicide prevention strategies is challenging because the prime outcome measure, suicide rates, can fluctuate due to suicide’s multidetermined nature and the myriad of uncontrollable factors affecting temporal rate changes. Also, having a strategy adopted by a government does not indicate the extent of implementation and the activities’ coverage of the target populations. Most analyses test the hypothesis that there are differences between rate trends before and after a date when a strategy was adopted. We examined changes without a priori hypothesis to identify trend changes in national suicide rates, for men and for women, to identify years when significant trend changes occurred, using Joinpoint analyses in 15 countries, including testing controlling for changes in GDP and unemployment, and examining whether significant trend changes were more likely when more per capita financing for the programs were provided. Overall results were mixed, with clear instances where the decline began years before the strategy was adopted or was not influenced by legislative adoption of a strategy. However, level of financing appears to partly explain findings for different countries, with some exceptions, most notably the United States, where substantial financing was not associated with decreasing rate trends. We suggest possible explanations for these “exceptions” and conclude that national strategies may contribute to lowering suicide rates if they are exhaustive and sufficiently finances, although other factors may confound our understanding of the causal pathways.