You asked
Please can you provide me with the following information:
numbers of nurses who have died by suicide from 2018 - present day
numbers of midwives who have died by suicide from 2018 - present day
numbers of student nurses and midwives who have died by suicide from 2018 - present day
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are responsible for the provision of mortality statistics for England and Wales. 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.
Occupations are defined using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010). Definitions of all groups and individual occupations can be found here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/standardoccupationalclassificationsoc/soc2010/soc2010volume1structureanddescriptionsofunitgroups
Please note before consulting our suicide statistics that the majority of 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.
Data:
We have produced ad hoc analysis on Suicide by occupation, England and Wales, 2011 to 2019 registrations, these datasets provide an insight into suicides by different occupational groups.
There are multiple occupation groups codes attributed to professions:
- In table 2 you will find a breakdown of suicides for sub-major occupation groups by sex, health professionals.
- Table 3 contains suicides for minor occupation groups by sex, health professionals.
- If you are looking for a specific health professional occupation, please looking at table 4. This table contains individual annual figures for both nurses and midwives.
An update for this analysis to include suicides by occupation registered in 2020 would need to be created as bespoke analysis. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. We therefore consider this to be information not held.
However, please see the following publications, which may be of interest:
Our most up-to-date analysis for suicide data are our quarterly provisional figures, accessible via the following link: Quarterly suicide death registrations in England: 2001 to 2019 registrations and Quarter 1 to Quarter 3 2020 (provisional). This provides suicides that have been registered from January to September 2020. The following dataset accompanying this bulletin provides this information broken down by age, sex, and region. Please note, due to the aforementioned registration delay, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
Our statistics are based on the date of registration, therefore our annual Suicides in the UK release is based on 2019 death registrations.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.