Background: Rates of suicidal behaviours vary markedly across different populations.To create a nationwide system to capture data on suicide behaviours provides a database of morbidity, mortality, geographic and temporal trends and also the population at high risk of suicide.Data from this registry can later be used to stimulate and facilitate further research on suicide.This paper describes the rationale, processes, and obstacles involved in developing a national suicide registry in 2009.Methods: This study was designed in Ministry of Health.A case report software form with an accompanying manual instruction had been prepared to ensure systematic and uniform data collection through portal system.Deputy of Health was responsible for data collection in their respective Universities of Medical sciences.Data collection began in March 2009 for a year.In order to run the project, from each university a mental health expert was selected to participate in the training workshop.The quality of data base and challenges was considered from different aspects.Results: A total number of 41109 suicide attempts were reported from 282 districts of 42 Medical Universities.This data covers 83.6% of irans population.The rate of suicide attempt was 65.8 attempts per 100000 populations and among them 1338 cases were completed suicides (58.5% males and 2.14 suicides per 100000 populations).In addition to suicide figures, this study revealed some of the obstacles and challenges for implementing a national registration system.Conclusion: Nationwide suicide registry system in the country provided detailed data for establishing of suicide surveillance system.It can be a solid foundation for a lot of conceptual work, data collection, and preventive efforts.There is always a question of reliability whenever figures of suicide are presented or discussed.Real figures may be higher, because suicide as a reason of death can be hidden.To efficiently capture the data on suicide, a concerted effort between various organizations is needed.