You asked
I would like to obtain information relating to the suicide rate during 2020 under the freedom of information act. Please provide me as much detail as possible with this request as in the date (or month), the age (or range), the sex and if possible, the BMI of each person.
I would also like the detailed information regarding ALL deaths in 2020 so I can for example analyse the death rates of people who have died due to flu, pneumonia, COVID etc and if they were overweight, had diabetes, heart disease etc.
We said
Thank you for your request.
ONS mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. This includes information such as sex, age group, area of usual residence and cause of death. BMI is not recorded on the death certificate so we cannot provide that information.
Latest provisional 2020 mortality data are available in the provisional weekly deaths publication.
2020 mortality data are still provisional and full cause of death information is not published until data are finalised in July 2021. The first release of complete 2020 mortality data will be via our Deaths Registered Series and NOMIS.
We would need to create a bespoke analysis using 2020 mortality data for England and Wales in order to fully comply with your request, which we are not obligated to do under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This analysis would therefore be considered to not be held. Bespoke services will be available to order once mortality data for 2020 have been finalised in the Summer of 2021. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.
Mortality data for 2013 to 2019 by sex, age, area of usual residence and cause of death are available via NOMIS. Prior to 2013, data can be obtained via our Deaths Registered Series and 21st century mortality publications.
The number of suicides for England and Wales for 1981 to 2019 are available here: Suicides in England and Wales: 2019 registrations. This publication will be updated to include 2020 data in September 2021; when a publication date is finalised it will be announced via our release calendar.
Suspected suicide deaths are investigated by a coroner in what's known as 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.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the most recent update including deaths that were registered from January to September of 2020. This is for deaths registered in 2020 and due to the registration delay described above, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019. The next update of this release is due on 30 April 2021.