Attempted suicide and suicides for young people between the ages of 18-21 years

FOI Ref: FOI/2021/3349

You asked

Please supply statistics for attempted suicide and suicides for young people between the ages of 18-21 years.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Unfortunately, we do not hold any statistics on non-fatal self-harm. NHS Digital may be better placed to assist with this part of your request.

The number of suicides, by sex and five year age group, for England and Wales, 1981 to 2020 are available in our Suicides in England and Wales publication. The Excel reference tables are available to access directly, here. Unfortunately, this publication doesn't include a breakdown for 18 to 21 year-olds specifically. This has data by standard five-year age bands (10 to 14,15 to 19, 20 to 24, 25 to 29 and so on). However, we may be able to create a custom output for you. More information about custom outputs is available below.

We have also published the following tables, which present numbers of suicides by single year of age (including 18 to 21 year olds), for England and Wales, but data are only available for deaths registered between 2014 and 2018.  As above, we may be able to produce a custom output for you if you require data for additional registration years.

Number of suicides by single year of age, England and Wales, 2018 registrations

Number of suicide deaths by sex and single year of age, deaths registered in England between 2014 to 2017

Custom tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales, as mentioned above, are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate).  Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.

We also produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the most recent update including deaths that were registered from Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) to Quarter 3 (July to September) 2021.

Please note, suspected suicide deaths are investigated by a coroner in what's known as an inquest. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a delay between the date of death and the date of death registration, referred to as a registration delay. Registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be 5 to 6 months on average. More information about the impact of registration delays is available here.

If you wish to discuss your enquiry further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.