You asked
Please provide information regarding the increase in percentage of suicide deaths during the lockdown for COVID-19, compared to before this period and the amount of suicide deaths in total during this period. This runs from from 23rd March- 4th January 2021.
If possible, could I also have a comparison between deaths from Coronavirus and deaths from suicide during this period as well.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We are unable to begin reporting on suicide deaths that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic until later in 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. The following dataset accompanying this bulletin provides this information broken down by age, sex, and region. Please note, due to the aforementioned registration delay, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019.
More information about the impact of registration delays is available here.
We produce provisional suicide data for England on a quarterly basis, with the most recent update including deaths that were registered from January to September of 2020. This is for deaths registered in 2020 and due to the registration delay described above, most of these deaths would have occurred in 2019. The next update of this release is due on 30 April 2021.
The number of suicides for England and Wales for 1981 to 2019 are available in the Suicides in England and Wales: 2019 registrations publication. This publication is updated annually in September, when a publication date is finalised it will be added to our release calendar.
Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by age, sex and region for 2020 are available in the following publication: Provisional weekly deaths.