FOI/2021/2330
You asked
Please can you show me the amount of suicides between Jan 2020 to May 2021 in the UK?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the production of Mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths from October to December 2020, which was released in April 2021. The publication explains that most suicides require an inquest, where a coroner must investigate the cause of death. The amount of time taken to hold an inquest causes a lag between the date the death occurred and the date the death is registered.
We refer to this as a registration delay and registration delays for deaths caused by suicide tend to be five to six months on average. Because our data is based on death registrations, this delay means that most deaths recorded for 2020 so far would have occurred in 2019. More detailed information can be found in the publication.
Our next Suicide in England and Wales publication is scheduled for release in September 2021, which will include 2020 data.