You asked
Please provide information regarding the increase in percentage of suicide deaths during the lockdown for COVID-19, compared to before this period and the amount of suicide deaths in total during this period. This runs from from 23rd March- 4th July 2020. If possible, could I also have a comparison between deaths from Coronavirus and deaths from suicide during this period as well.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We will be unable to begin reporting on suicide deaths that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic until late 2020 or early 2021.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths registered from January to June 2020. The publication explains that the majority of 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.
You may also be interested in the following publication: Suicides in the UK. Data is available in this publication for suicides registered from 2011-2019.
Please see the following link to weekly COVID-19 death registrations: Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional. Data is available from 2010 to 2020 within this publication for comparison purposes. This data set is updated every Tuesday.
Monthly deaths are available via the following link: Monthly mortality analysis, England and Wales. This publication provides provisional death registration data for England and Wales, broken down by sex, age and country. Includes deaths due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) and leading causes of death. This is updated monthly and release dates can be found on our Release Calendar.