Australia's peak suicide prevention body is reporting an alarming increase in the rate of suicide among women, and says they are increasingly using more violent methods to take their own lives.

Suicide Prevention Australia has also drawn attention to a doubling in the rate of self-harm among young women in little more than a decade.

About 2,500 Australians take their own lives every year, and while 75 per cent of deaths from suicide are men, more women are attempting to take their own lives.

Suicide Prevention Australia will tomorrow release a report, titled Suicide and Suicidal Behaviour in Women - Issues and Prevention, that shows a 10 per cent increase in deaths for each of the past three years.

Chief executive Sue Murray said while the focus on men's suicide was critically important, women's suicide had largely been ignored.

"We need new investment, greater investment and more targeted programs that will address suicide as a gender issue," she said

Ms Murray said a disturbing trend uncovered in the report was an increase in women using more violent methods to take their own lives.

"Therefore we're seeing an increase in the number of deaths every year," she said.

The report's author, Susan Beaton, said she believed it was the first serious examination of women's suicide in the world.

"I was staggered at the number of policy documents and strategy documents that really had very little, sometimes no commentary at all, about women's suicidal behaviour," she said.

Ms Beaton said much of the increase came from young women.

"There's been an increase in young women dying, but it's not part of our public dialogue," she said.

"The numbers may not be as great as men in their middle years and so we tend to focus on where the numbers are larger."

Hayley Purdon attempted to take her own life when she was 19 years old.

She is now using her "lived experience" to help organisations target their prevention strategies.

"I developed an eating disorder, depression and some anxiety issues which all then led to an attempt on my life," she said.

"As a woman, I had a lot of trouble connecting with services; I was a young person but I didn't feel welcome at young people's services."

Ms Murray said there was evidence to show the treatment of women who had attempted suicide could be trivialised.

"The behaviour is seen to be perhaps manipulative - seeking attention - and it's that sort of stigmatising response that impacts on women and how they choose to take their own life," she said.

Rate of self-harm among girls has doubled

Ms Murray was also worried about a doubling in the rate of self-harm among young women in the past 12 years.

"We know that self-harm is an indicator of potential future attempt of suicide," she said.

"In the paper we show that there has been a 50 per cent increase in young women presenting with self-harm injuries.

"We don't know which of those young women will then go on to take their own life."

Ms Purdon, who also has experience of self-harming behaviour, said she believed it was a form of communication.

"These women are trying to say something but they don't have proper tools to say it," she said.

More than 350 delegates at the National Suicide Prevention Conference in Hobart have come together with an agenda to halve Australia's suicide rate in 10 years.

Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove delivered the opening address.

He told delegates suicide was the leading cause of death for both men and women under the age of 44, and offered his perspective after a long military career.

"Let's just say that for my life, I'm nearly 68, so in 68 years we have seen more Australians taking their own life than all of the war casualties that we list on the wall of the Australian War Memorial," he said.