FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2994
You asked
Please supply data for the locations of suicide deaths and /or how many suicides occurred in the workplace across since 2000.
Please also supply data on how many individuals left a suicide note and if so, how many of those notes had the mention of workplace in them, i.e. workplace pressure, bullying, stress from work, overworked, redundancy etc.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The mortality statistics compiled by ourselves are based on the information provided at death registration and cover all deaths that occur in England and Wales. Suspected suicides are required to be reported to the local coroner for investigation and all suicides will be certified by a coroner following an inquest. Once the inquest has concluded the death can be registered and will be reported to us.
Place of death is recorded as part of the registration process however we do not routinely release suicide figures for specific places or establishments as such data is likely to be assessed as disclosive under the ONS Disclosure Control Guidance for Births and Deaths Statistics. Further information on the data collected and analysed as part of our statistics is available in the Suicide rates in the UK QMI
However, we may be able to create a custom output. Information on suicides in England and Wales by place of occurrence along with other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries would fall outside of the Freedom of Information regime and should be made to: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
The latest publication of Suicides in England and Wales 2020 has been released and will provide registered deaths from suicide by age, sex, area of usual residence and method.
We also hold the following analysis : Suicide by occupation, England and Wales, 2011 to 2020 registrations.
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. The report is structured so that it describes larger categories of occupations before moving on to describe risk in specific occupations.
We do not hold analysis of where a suicide note may have been left by the deceased. If a suicide note was left by the deceased it may form part of the coroners text. However, a coroners role is to assess the cause of death. In the case of a suicide the cause of death would be related to the method i.e. hanging. The coroner would not necessarily add information of a suicide note. As this information is not recorded in a standardised way, we do not have reliable raw data to analyse. Therefore we consider this information not held.