You asked
A request in October last year received this response:
"Please could you disclose the figures for how many suicides we have had this year.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We will be unable to begin reporting on suicide deaths, that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, until late 2020 or early 2021."
Please could you now provide an update on the number of suicides by age that occurred in 2020.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The majority of suicides require an inquest, where a coroner investigates the death. The amount of time it takes to hold an inquest causes a lag 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.
Therefore, our most up-to-date analysis for suicide data are our quarterly provisional figures, accessible via the following link: Quarterly suicide death registrations in England: 2001 to 2019 registrations and Quarter 1 to Quarter 3 2020 (provisional). This provides suicides that have been registered from January to September 2020. The following dataset accompanying this bulletin provides this information broken down by age, sex, and region. Please note, due to the aforementioned registration delay, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
Our statistics are based on the date of registration, therefore our annual Suicides in the UK release is based on 2019 death registrations.