You asked
I would like to make an FOI request for the following information:
- Monthly suicide registrations from 2016 - 2020 (or as up to date as is possible)
- Age and gender breakdowns
- UK and ROI
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. National Records Scotland (NRS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Therefore, we do not hold the requested data for the whole of the UK and Republic of Ireland. Should you wish to obtain this data from NRS and NISRA, they can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively. Statistics for Republic of Ireland can be obtained from Central Statistics Office.
The following statistical bulletins provide suicide data from 1981 to 2019 at an annual level by age, sex, area of usual residence of the deceased, and method: Suicides in England and Wales -- Statistical Bulletins. This is our latest finalised publication.
Most 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, the most up-to-date suicide data that we hold are our quarterly suicide statistics for England by age and sex in the following publication: Quarterly suicide death registrations in England: 2001 to 2020 registrations and Quarter 1 to Quarter 4 2020 (provisional). This provides provisional suicide analysis up to December 2020. The following dataset accompanying this bulletin provides this information broken down by age, sex, and region. Please note, due to the registration delay, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
Our finalised annual publication of suicides in 2020, named Suicides in England and Wales, will be published in September/October 2021.
Unfortunately, we do not hold monthly breakdowns of suicide data by age and sex for England and Wales from 2016 to 2020. However, we may be able to create a custom output. Information on suicides by month of occurrence from 2019-2016 along with other 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.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk