FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3534
You asked
Please supply the exact numbers of people who have died by suicide for the following dates:
- June 2019-December 2019
- June 2020-December 2020
- June 2021-December 2021
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Unfortunately, we do not hold analysis of suicides by your specific date range.
However, we can provide the following:
Suicides 2019 to 2020
Our statistics are based on the date of registration, therefore our latest annual Suicides in England and Wales release is based on 2020 death registrations. In the previous versions tab, you will find annual data for 2019.
If this does not meet your needs, we can create a custom output for suicide registrations in England and Wales using your specific date range. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales 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.
Suicides 2021
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.
We do produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths that have been registered from July to September of 2021. This is for deaths registered in 2021, and due to the registration delay described above, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2020.
Provisional October, November and December 2021 data will be published in April 2022.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.