You asked
Please can you provide suicide statistics from January 2020 to May 2021.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths from October to December 2020 and provisional data for January to March 2021, which was released in April 2021. The publication explains that most 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.
Our next Suicide in England and Wales publication is scheduled for release in September 2021, which will include 2020 data.