Suicides, infant mortality, missed medical treatment, and domestic homicides in 2020 compared to the past 5 years

You asked

​Please provide answers to the following questions:

1. How many adult suicides have there been since March and how does it compare to the last 5 previous years? Please provide last 5 years figures.

2. How many domestic violence related adult deaths have there been since March and how does it compare to previous years? Please provide last 5 years figures.

3. How many domestic violence related children's deaths have there been since March and how does it compare to previous years? Please provide last 5 years figures.

4. How many under 18s suicides have there been since March and how does it compare to the last 5 previous years? Please provide last 5 years figures.

5. How many infant deaths have there been since March 2020 and how does it compare to previous years? Please provide last 5 years figures.

6. How many children have died as a consequence of missed medical treatment since March 2020 and how does it compare to the previous 5 years?

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

Suicides

We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales. This is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration. 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.

We will be unable to begin reporting on suicide deaths, that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, until early 2021.

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.

Therefore, 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. Please note, due to the aforementioned registration delay, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.

The following dataset, Suicides in England and Wales, provides registered deaths in England and Wales from suicide analysed by sex, age, area of usual residence of the deceased and suicide method from 2011-2019. Age specific suicides can be found on Table 5.

Infant mortality

The latest child and infant mortality data available is Child and infant mortality in England and Wales: 2018. This publication provides data regarding stillbirths, infant, and childhood deaths occurring annually in England and Wales, and associated risk factors. Data is available from 2011-2018.  This will be updated with 2019 data in early 2021.  

Deaths of those under 1 deaths are tracked weekly for 2020 in the following publication: Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional. However, this does not include stillbirths, or infant and neonatal breakdown.

Therefore, infant mortality data for 2019 and 2020 is considered exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. Furthermore, as a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.

This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest.  This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.

Deaths resulting from missed medical treatment

As our mortality data is taken from the death certificate, we do not hold information regarding how many children will have died from missed medical treatment. This information is not recorded as part of the death registration process. NHS Digital may be better placed to answer your enquiry. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.

Homicides resulting from domestic violence

Data on homicides in England and Wales are supplied to us by the Home Office and are taken from the Homicide Index. A homicide is recorded to be "domestic" when the relationship between a victim aged 16 years and over and the principal suspect falls into one of the following categories: spouse, common-law spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, ex-spouse, ex-cohabiting partner or ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, adulterous relationship, son or daughter (including step and adopted relationships), parent (including step and adopted relationships), brother or sister, other relatives. As such, homicides which are categorised as "domestic" will not include children aged 15 years or under.

Our most recent data on domestic homicides can be found in Table 3 of the Appendix Tables for our publication titled Domestic abuse during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, England and Wales: November 2020. This table shows the number of domestic homicides by quarter for the last five years. It should be noted that this data is provisional and subject to change.

In addition, Tables 21 to 24 of the Appendix Tables for our publication Domestic abuse victim characteristics, England and Wales: year ending March 2019 provide further details on domestic homicides including victim characteristics. These tables, however, only report on the period year ending March 2017 to year ending March 2019 combined.

In Table 23 of the Appendix Tables for our publication Child abuse in England and Wales: March 2020, we provide data on child homicides by their relationship to the perpetrator. This data is available up to the year ending March 2018.