FOI Ref: FOI/2022/3929

You asked

Please supply the aggregated number of suicides amongst black adult males recorded by your team between January 2017 and January 2022, broken down by year, as well as cause of suicide.

Please can you also provide the number of black adult male suicides in the following locations between January 2017 and January 2022:

  • Birmingham, UK

  • London, UK

  • Manchester, UK

  • Leeds, UK

  • Sheffield, UK

  • York, Uk

  • Bristol, UK

  • Nottingham, UK

  • Newcastle, UK

  • Gloucester, UK

  • Brighton, UK

  • Hull, UK

  • Reading, UK

  • Coventry, UK

  • Northampton, UK

  • Plymouth, UK

  • Peterborough, UK

  • Norwich, UK

  • Watford, UK

Aswell as that can you provide the percentage/recorded number for black male adult suicides between 2017 and 2022 as a whole for the following countries:

  • England

  • Northern Ireland

  • Scotland

  • Wales

If possible with all this information requested above, can you please provide the following demographic breakdown:

age grouping e.g (21-25), (26-30)

marital status

employment status

professions

income

confirmed mental health status

socioeconomic background

criminal history/offenders

in the care system/leaving care

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

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.

Ethnicity is not recorded as part of the death registration process. However we have created experimental statistics using mortality data linked with Census 2011 data to produce the following analysis: Mortality from leading causes of death by ethnic group, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).

Ethnic group is based on self-reported ethnicity in the 2011 Census. Table 14 provides suicides by ethnic group, including Black African, Black Caribbean and Black Other.

Unfortunately, we do not hold any further analysis on suicides by ethnicity with your requested disaggregation. In order to fulfil this request, we would need to create new information using a high level of statistical skill and judgement. Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, public authorities are not obligated to create information in order to respond to requests. The requested information therefore is not held.

Also, unfortunately, we are also unable to offer the specific requested disaggregation of data via our bespoke services, as suicide data containing the number of requested variables (e.g. cause, age, low level geography, occupation, ethnic group and marital status) would be disclosive.

However, you may wish to discuss the provision of different variations of the requested information, which does not pose a disclosure risk, with our Health Data team's ad hoc bespoke services. Such services would be 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.

You may also find the following information useful:

Deaths involving Suicide 2017 to 2020

Our annual Suicides in England and Wales provides data for deaths from suicide, from 1981 to 2020. You can find annual figures for England and Wales in table 1 and England figures in table 2.

The update for 2021 is expected to be available in September 2022.

Suicide by specific geography 2017 to 2020

We publish Suicides in England and Wales by local authority - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) on an annual basis.

You can also use our Customise my data service to produce a breakdown of deaths involving suicide by your requested local authority.

Suicide by occupation 2017 to 2020

Occupation is reported at the time of death registration by the informant. 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).

The recorded occupation likely reflects the deceased's main lifetime occupation or their occupation at the time of death. The occupation hierarchy tool allows exploration of the hierarchy of the SOC 2010 classification.

For deaths registered between 2016 and 2020, we have only published numbers of deaths from suicide in different occupational groups. The number of suicides by sex, country and occupation, deaths registered 2011 to 2020 can be found on the ONS website.

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.

2021 and 2022 data

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.

We do produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the latest update including deaths that have been registered from July to September of 2021. This is for deaths registered in 2021, and due to the registration delay described above, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2020.

Provisional November and December 2021 data will be published in April 2022.  

If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.