3,828 suicides occurred between April and December 2020 in England and Wales, equivalent to an age-standardised mortality rate of 9.8 deaths per 100,000 people; this is statistically significantly lower than the same period in 2019 and 2018, but statistically similar to 2017.
The male suicide rate (14.8 deaths per 100,000 males) was statistically significantly lower than in the same period between 2018 and 2019, whereas the female rate (5.0 deaths per 100,000 females) showed no statistically significant change.
Between April and December 2020, age-specific suicide rates in England and Wales statistically significantly decreased for those aged 30 to 39 years from the same period in 2019.
Coroners’ investigations result in suicide registration delays and were further disrupted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; while our provisional data for 2020 suicides will be underestimates, late registrations will not fully explain the decrease because most suicides for this period will now be registered.
This is doubly interesting. Firstly for undermining the anti lockdown people who claimed this would increase but secondly as the most at risk group, men, saw a tangible drop which could hint towards a factor that we could address as a society. Perhaps the drop in the most likely to choose suicide came from them not being over worked, could it not be worth exploring if say a 4 day work week or more flexibility such as WFH allows suicidal urges to be prevented or at least managed better.
With the low rate for women being unchanged it shows that factors didn’t change for them but for men it did. This could genuinely be a key to at least helping men.
I’m glad it’s decreasing, I’m sad to see it so high, still. Hopefully it’ll be at 0 one day, but therapy is too expensive and I need to pay for food
More accurately it looks as though rates were increasing before the pandemic, and then dropped down to an even level during lockdown. I know for a lot of people lockdown took some of the pressure of life off, so what pressures were increasing in the last few years prior to the pandemic that lockdown was potentially able to soften?
cost of living crisis gonna be like *hold my hat* :/
as someone who’s had intermittent suicidal thoughts for decades the level of care you can get in the UK is just abysmal… they’ll throw antidepressants at your or a 6 week therapy session with someone who seems barely qualified but that’s about it, no attempt to *really* help for peeps with slightly more complicated issues
seems like everything has been reduced to checkboxes, instead of continuing quality of care for those who need it… but I guess it saves money ><
I have a feeling we’ll see a rebound, larger than before, post pandemic.
At the time there were a lot of people saying that the purported/assumed increase in suicide meant that the lockdowns were a bad idea.
I even remember multiple people on this sub suggesting that a larger number of Covid deaths were a price worth paying to avoid this increase in suicides – suggesting that old people’s lives are worth less because a 65 year old killed by Covid would have fewer years left than a 30 year old who kills themselves.
At the time, it seemed a bit like selfishness or callousness. It seemed a bit like suicide was being weaponised to make an argument against lockdowns, a bit like the people who don’t give the slightest shit about homelessness but who will say something along the lines of, “we shouldn’t help any refugees until we’ve helped the homeless”.
I suppose we’ll see whether that was the case now. If we see lots of people saying that they were wrong about the lockdowns and that they actually support them now that they know that their biggest argument turns out to have been disproven, I suppose that might show that their concern about suicide was genuine!
But the anti-lockdown brigade said that suicide rates massively increased!
Would be interesting to see the rates split out by employment status during Covid, i.e.
“lost job – no furlough” / “working from home” / “working from workplace” / “furloughed”
Those who were furloughed, especially those who knew they had a secure job post-Covid, pretty much “won the Covid lottery”, and their easier time probably offset any increased stress in the other groups.
Not everyone was furloughed, but I think enough were for it to have a significant influence.
Well I’m probably not the best typical case example since I’m autistic but that might provide insight. I was happier the less exposure to human social dynamics I had for a time and grew more stressed being in high powered social environments. WFH allowed many people to adopt a similar life style to shut-ins like me and if they suffered in the rat race then it did them good!
Why are the male rates so much higher?
Oh wow, what a surprise, not having to be in work every day is *good* for your mental health.
Do they explain the rationale for excluding the first quarter of the years?
Ah, so my PhD pals who were claiming lockdowns were increasing suicides were talking bollocks? Surprise surprise the Tory voting, Joe Rogan listening, hard right idiots in my year were talking utter shite.
I didn’t know of anyone personally who had committed suicide, but since covid I’ve known 2 people (albeit not well) to take their own lives and worse still I’ve heard of countless others from other people in my friendship group from uni. I was unlucky to start uni in Sept 19 and was friendly with a lot of mature foreign students and they were hit probably the worst. We had a Chinese student in my halls, didn’t speak a word of English, didnt interact with us, we weren’t friends, but someone downstairs spoke the language and they’d chat. When I went back in September 20 I found out he’d taken his own life. Horrible horrible horrible
I hope the discussion about men’s mental health continues and we see more in the way of local support groups spring up as time goes on. Mental health issues are very isolating and it is awful to think you are the only person going through them, thinking everyone else is doing fine and you are the only one struggling. Men need to reach out and support other men when they are feeling down, it will help drive this number down even more.
Of course it got better. You had more personal time. You got wages or supports and you got to stay at home and save money and not feel precarious. Lockdown showed us the future.
what im seeing from this is that from 2015 – 2020 the total change was minor, and data on suicides during covid times is not present. the data does not contain part of the year and does not count wales and england seperately even though they may have vastly different data.
i doubt the limited data set was on purpose and expect whoever was behind this did their best but this data is so limited i can not say it really means anything (at least personally if not generally)
as someone with suicidal thoughts myself, i have 0 idea what caused the drop from 2018-2020 but whatever it is i have not experienced it. if anything my depression has gotten worse steadily each year since 2016. if anyone knows the atribution let me know
Maybe it is because I just woke up but that graph is awful, should have been a line graph with 3 lines.
I’m not sure how significantly 11 per 10k to 10 is mind.
Mental health services in the UK just just exist to get everyone addicted to overpriced antidepressants that don’t work.
I wonder what the correlation is between suicide and work pressures? Obviously there was a percentage of people who continued to work as normal throughout, but for those that were furloughed I can’t help but wonder if having more time that was *theirs* during lockdown helped.
23 comments
Full report can be found at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/deathsfromsuicidethatoccurredinenglandandwales/apriltodecember2020
3,828 suicides occurred between April and December 2020 in England and Wales, equivalent to an age-standardised mortality rate of 9.8 deaths per 100,000 people; this is statistically significantly lower than the same period in 2019 and 2018, but statistically similar to 2017.
The male suicide rate (14.8 deaths per 100,000 males) was statistically significantly lower than in the same period between 2018 and 2019, whereas the female rate (5.0 deaths per 100,000 females) showed no statistically significant change.
Between April and December 2020, age-specific suicide rates in England and Wales statistically significantly decreased for those aged 30 to 39 years from the same period in 2019.
Coroners’ investigations result in suicide registration delays and were further disrupted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; while our provisional data for 2020 suicides will be underestimates, late registrations will not fully explain the decrease because most suicides for this period will now be registered.
This is doubly interesting. Firstly for undermining the anti lockdown people who claimed this would increase but secondly as the most at risk group, men, saw a tangible drop which could hint towards a factor that we could address as a society. Perhaps the drop in the most likely to choose suicide came from them not being over worked, could it not be worth exploring if say a 4 day work week or more flexibility such as WFH allows suicidal urges to be prevented or at least managed better.
With the low rate for women being unchanged it shows that factors didn’t change for them but for men it did. This could genuinely be a key to at least helping men.
I’m glad it’s decreasing, I’m sad to see it so high, still. Hopefully it’ll be at 0 one day, but therapy is too expensive and I need to pay for food
More accurately it looks as though rates were increasing before the pandemic, and then dropped down to an even level during lockdown. I know for a lot of people lockdown took some of the pressure of life off, so what pressures were increasing in the last few years prior to the pandemic that lockdown was potentially able to soften?
cost of living crisis gonna be like *hold my hat* :/
as someone who’s had intermittent suicidal thoughts for decades the level of care you can get in the UK is just abysmal… they’ll throw antidepressants at your or a 6 week therapy session with someone who seems barely qualified but that’s about it, no attempt to *really* help for peeps with slightly more complicated issues
seems like everything has been reduced to checkboxes, instead of continuing quality of care for those who need it… but I guess it saves money ><
I have a feeling we’ll see a rebound, larger than before, post pandemic.
At the time there were a lot of people saying that the purported/assumed increase in suicide meant that the lockdowns were a bad idea.
I even remember multiple people on this sub suggesting that a larger number of Covid deaths were a price worth paying to avoid this increase in suicides – suggesting that old people’s lives are worth less because a 65 year old killed by Covid would have fewer years left than a 30 year old who kills themselves.
At the time, it seemed a bit like selfishness or callousness. It seemed a bit like suicide was being weaponised to make an argument against lockdowns, a bit like the people who don’t give the slightest shit about homelessness but who will say something along the lines of, “we shouldn’t help any refugees until we’ve helped the homeless”.
I suppose we’ll see whether that was the case now. If we see lots of people saying that they were wrong about the lockdowns and that they actually support them now that they know that their biggest argument turns out to have been disproven, I suppose that might show that their concern about suicide was genuine!
But the anti-lockdown brigade said that suicide rates massively increased!
Would be interesting to see the rates split out by employment status during Covid, i.e.
“lost job – no furlough” / “working from home” / “working from workplace” / “furloughed”
Those who were furloughed, especially those who knew they had a secure job post-Covid, pretty much “won the Covid lottery”, and their easier time probably offset any increased stress in the other groups.
Not everyone was furloughed, but I think enough were for it to have a significant influence.
Well I’m probably not the best typical case example since I’m autistic but that might provide insight. I was happier the less exposure to human social dynamics I had for a time and grew more stressed being in high powered social environments. WFH allowed many people to adopt a similar life style to shut-ins like me and if they suffered in the rat race then it did them good!
Why are the male rates so much higher?
Oh wow, what a surprise, not having to be in work every day is *good* for your mental health.
Do they explain the rationale for excluding the first quarter of the years?
Ah, so my PhD pals who were claiming lockdowns were increasing suicides were talking bollocks? Surprise surprise the Tory voting, Joe Rogan listening, hard right idiots in my year were talking utter shite.
I didn’t know of anyone personally who had committed suicide, but since covid I’ve known 2 people (albeit not well) to take their own lives and worse still I’ve heard of countless others from other people in my friendship group from uni. I was unlucky to start uni in Sept 19 and was friendly with a lot of mature foreign students and they were hit probably the worst. We had a Chinese student in my halls, didn’t speak a word of English, didnt interact with us, we weren’t friends, but someone downstairs spoke the language and they’d chat. When I went back in September 20 I found out he’d taken his own life. Horrible horrible horrible
I hope the discussion about men’s mental health continues and we see more in the way of local support groups spring up as time goes on. Mental health issues are very isolating and it is awful to think you are the only person going through them, thinking everyone else is doing fine and you are the only one struggling. Men need to reach out and support other men when they are feeling down, it will help drive this number down even more.
Of course it got better. You had more personal time. You got wages or supports and you got to stay at home and save money and not feel precarious. Lockdown showed us the future.
what im seeing from this is that from 2015 – 2020 the total change was minor, and data on suicides during covid times is not present. the data does not contain part of the year and does not count wales and england seperately even though they may have vastly different data.
i doubt the limited data set was on purpose and expect whoever was behind this did their best but this data is so limited i can not say it really means anything (at least personally if not generally)
as someone with suicidal thoughts myself, i have 0 idea what caused the drop from 2018-2020 but whatever it is i have not experienced it. if anything my depression has gotten worse steadily each year since 2016. if anyone knows the atribution let me know
Maybe it is because I just woke up but that graph is awful, should have been a line graph with 3 lines.
I’m not sure how significantly 11 per 10k to 10 is mind.
Mental health services in the UK just just exist to get everyone addicted to overpriced antidepressants that don’t work.
I wonder what the correlation is between suicide and work pressures? Obviously there was a percentage of people who continued to work as normal throughout, but for those that were furloughed I can’t help but wonder if having more time that was *theirs* during lockdown helped.
Was there a preceding spike?