FOI Ref: FOI/2022/4094
You asked
I'd be grateful if you could disclose the information requested below, or if that is not possible, help me to refine my request appropriately.
I'd prefer the following information in either a csv or xls document, please. For each question, please provide separate answers for the North East and for Cumbria.
- The number of suicide deaths registered each year between 2011 and 2021, broken down by year, gender and age (if you can't give a specific age, an age group would be fine)
- A breakdown by occupation and year detailing how many of those deaths involved farmers, teachers, doctors, nurses, care workers, paramedics, police officers, prison officers or fire fighters
- A breakdown by sexuality, if recorded, and year
- A breakdown by religion and year
- A breakdown by ethnicity and year
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Please note, if you are a journalist covering a suicide-related issue, please consider following the Samaritans' media guidelines on the reporting of suicide because of the potentially damaging consequences. In particular, the guidelines advise on terminology and include links to sources of support for anyone affected by the themes in the article.
Suicides are reported in arrears due to registration delays due to referral to Coroner's office for investigation. The registration delay refers to the time lag between the date of death (that is, when the death occurred) and the date the death was registered. For further information on the impact of registration delays, see Section 7 of our Suicide rates in the UK quality and methodology information (QMI). Full data for 2021 will be released in our Annual publication in September 2022.
We report suicide statistics annually as part of our Suicides in England and Wales.
We also produce provisional headline suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths that have been registered from October to December of 2021. This is for deaths registered in 2021. However, please note that due to the delay between date of occurrence of a suicide and date of registration, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2020.
Our NOMIS webservice will also provide Suicides (Leading cause 47 ICD-10 code) by local authority, five-year age band and sex. Data is available via this webservice for 2013 to 2020 and is accessible via the following link:
Nomis - Official Labour Market Statistics - Nomis - Official Labour Market Statistics (nomisweb.co.uk). This link has suicides in the Northeast and Cumbria by Sex and Age readily programmed for you to download.
We also have the following analysis: Suicides in England and Wales by local authority.
These publications will be updated with 2021 data once the data are finalised later this year.
If you would like to obtain this information prior to this, we could create a custom output for you. However, please note that this information is still provisional, so this output would not represent the final figures for 2021. Such services are 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.
Occupation
Data on occupation is coded using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010). In all, there are 9 major groups of occupations (for example, skilled trades occupations); 25 sub-major groups (for example, skilled construction and building trades); 90 minor groups (for example, building finishing trades); and more than 350 individual occupations (for example, painters and decorators). Full lists of occupations used in the analysis are reported in the accompanying data tables, and descriptions of these can be found in ONS Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Hierarchy.
Please see the following occupation codes of interest:
SOC Codes:
- 5111 - Farmers
- 2311 - Higher education teaching professionals
- 2312 - Further education teaching professionals
- 2314 - Secondary education teaching professionals.
- 2315 - Primary and nursery education teaching professionals
- 2316 - Special needs education professionals
- 2317 - Senior professionals
- 2318 - Education advisers and school inspectors
- 2319 - Teaching and other educational professionals n.e.c.
- 2211 - Medical practitioners
- 2231 - Nurses
- 2232 - Midwives
- 3213 - Paramedics
- 6145 - Care workers and home carers
- 6146 - Senior care workers
- 6147 - Care escorts
- 3312 - Police officers (sergeant and below)
- 3313 - Fire service officers (watch manager and below)
- 3315 - Police community support officers
- 1173 - Senior officers in fire, ambulance, prison and related services
Suicide by occupation, England and Wales, 2011 to 2020 registrations Please note that the numbers detailed here cannot be used to ascertain the risk of suicide among occupations. Differences in numbers of deaths may merely reflect the underlying population structure as opposed to differences in risk. Table 4 of this publication shows data for the following occupations.
As part of our bespoke data pathway, we can look at your request and advise what level of information we could provide, as there may be disclosure concerns with the requested breakdown of data. These custom data sets are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources, are chargeable and published under our Open Data policy. To discuss further details and to request a quote for a custom data set, please contact the HALE Customer Services Team on Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
Sexuality, ethnicity and religion
Someone's sexuality, ethnicity and religion are not recorded on the death certificate, as they are classified as self-reported characteristic.
We have produced one analysis of deaths by leading causes by ethnicity, using mortality data linked to Census 2011 data. Data on suicide by ethnicity is recorded in table 8 of Mortality from leading causes of death by ethnic group, England and Wales. Deaths due to suicide can also be found by using table 15 to filter on ICD10 Codes X40-X49 and X60-X84 for 10+, Y10-Y34 for 15.
Further analysis of suicides by ethnicity, and suicides by religion or sexuality is not held, as this would require a high level of skill and judgment to create analysis, involving complex linking of Census information to mortality data. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Public Authorities are not obligated to create information to respond to requests. This information therefore is not held.
In case it is of interest, we also have the following user requested data sets and FOI responses released under the ONS research and data access policy and under previously published FOIs: