FOI reference: FOI-2024-1799
You asked
Under the Freedom of Information Act I would like information on the following:
1. The total number of individuals living in the United Kingdom classed as non-white - specifically individuals whose ethnicity is deemed as ACH/BME/BAMET/Asian/Arabic - who were documented by a coroner or some authoritative body as died by suicide over the past ten-year period - November 2013 - November 2023.
2. I would also like to request that the information is broken down by each country within the British Isles namely: England, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland.
3. Additionally, please provide a breakdown of the information for each country in to the following age groups:
0-34 yeas of age
35-59 years of age
60+
4. Finally, I request a breakdown by gender for each of the stated countries and by ages as requested.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the production of mortality statistics for deaths registered in England and Wales. This is driven by information collected from death certificates 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 do not hold complete analysis of your request but have published Mortality from leading causes of death by ethnic group, England and Wales which provides deaths due to suicide by ethnic group from 2012 to 2019. The ethnic groupings available in this release are as follows:
Ethnic group is based on self-reported ethnicity in the 2011 Census. The analysis used the below ethnic groups as these provided categories with large enough numbers to estimate reliable male and female mortality rates with adequate precision for each group.
White: White British, White Irish, Gypsy, and Irish Travellers, Other White
Mixed/Multiple Ethnic Groups: White and Black Caribbean; White and Black African; White and Asian; Any other Mixed or Multiple ethnic background
Indian
Bangladeshi
Pakistani
Asian Other
Black African
Black Caribbean
Black Other
Other ethnic group: Arab, Chinese, Other.
Table 14 shows a breakdown of deaths due to suicide with a 3-year aggregate.
Further information would need to be created a new analysis. We may be able to produce a bespoke output to fulfil this. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data are available to order. Such extracts are subject to disclosure control, legal frameworks, resources and agreement to costs under the ONS Charging policy.
Please note, suspected suicide deaths are investigated by a coroner in 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. Data for 2023 will not be published until late 2024 to allow the inclusion of this data.
Please contact the Health Analysis and Pandemic Insight Customer Service team at Health.Data@ons.gov.uk for further information or to obtain a quote.