You asked
FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2610
I am looking to find out the latest published rate of suicide within registered nurses in the UK versus the rate found within the general population of the UK. If possible, could these statistics be broken down per nation of the UK?
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 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. 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.
For England and Wales, we hold the following 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, I would suggest looking at table 4. This table contains individual annual figures for both nurses and midwives.
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
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.