MOSCOW, November 23 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's suicide rate is the second worst in the world after Lithuania, the director of a leading Russian social and psychiatric research center said Thursday.

"Russia takes second place in the world for the number of suicides, after Lithuania," Tatyana Dmitriyeva said. "Suicides claim between 57,000 and 60,000 lives annually."

With Russia's official population of 145 million, a figure of 60,000 suicides corresponds to 41 per 100,000 people.

The head of the Serbsky National Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry said cardiac diseases are the most common cause of death in the country, followed by suicides, cancer and car accidents.

She said about 90% of suicides result from psychological disorders.

Boris Polozhy, a department head with the Serbsky Center, said earlier said official statistics show 36.1 cases of suicide for every 100,000 people in Russia.

He said the most problematic regions in Russia were the Koryak Autonomous District (with 133.5 suicides per 100,000 people), the republic of Komi (110.3), the republic of Altai (101.9) and the Nenets Autonomous Area (95.7).

Polozhny added that the situation was much better in republics of the North Caucasus, with 1.1 registered suicide cases per 100,000 people in Ingushetia, 3.2 in Daghestan, and 4.8 in North Ossetia.

Moscow and St. Petersburg lose 11 and 17.8 people per 100,000 to suicides each year, respectively, according to official data.