This report looks at key trends in prison suicide rates and presents what Samaritans know about why some people in prison take their own lives. The reasons, as with all suicides, are complex. It is suggested that the increased risk of suicide in prisoners stems from a unique combination of pre-existing vulnerability and the prison environment itself.
Samaritans_PrisonsDataReport_2019
Around 200 young people die by suicide every year. This report investigates the relationship between loneliness and suicide in young people, and if or how they may be connected.
This report from Samaritans and Centre for Mental Health explored the role of GP services in helping people who are at risk of suicide, reviewing the evidence about what GPs and their colleagues could do to help save lives among people with suicidal feelings.
The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute have published a report exploring the evidence around debt and suicidal thoughts and actions, and suicide prevention recommendations for government, local authorities and essential services providers.
A Silent Killer: Breaking the link between financial difficulty and suicide
This online learning resource has been developed by researchers at the Manchester Self-Harm (MaSH) Project, which is part of the Centre for Suicide Prevention, a leading UK centre for research into suicidal behaviour based at The University of Manchester.
This resource has been designed to help people understand more about why people may self-harm and how to help people who present to hospital emergency departments after self-harm.
MaSH Learning: Management of Self-Harm in the Emergency Department
The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health annual reports provide findings relating to people who died by suicide or were convicted of homicide across all UK countries. Additional findings are presented on sudden unexplained deaths (SUD) under mental health care in England and Wales.
Their large and internationally unique database is a national case series of suicide, homicide and SUD by mental health patients over 20 years. This allows them to examine the circumstances surrounding these incidents and changes in trends over time, and to make recommendations for clinical practice and policy to improve safety in mental health care.
This research, undertaken by Refuge and the University of Warwick, provides detailed substantial and original evidence on the prevalence of suicidal ideation and attempts amongst domestically abused people in the UK. It supports existing research in suggesting a significant association between experiencing domestic abuse and suffering negative psychological effects. And highlights the importance of professionals that engage with domestically abused people being more aware of and responsive to their risk of suicidality.
The analyses from the Office for National Statistics are based on deaths registered in England between 2011 and 2015. Suicide was defined using the National Statistics definition which includes both intentional self-harm and injury or poisoning of undetermined intent, based on the coroner’s findings.
The Fingertips Suicide Prevention Profile was produced to help develop understanding at a local level and support an intelligence driven approach to suicide prevention. It collates and presents a range of publicly available data on suicide, associated prevalence, risk factors, and service contact among groups at increased risk. The links below take you to the PHE site containing the live data.
The British Psychological Society position paper.
Understanding and preventing suicide: A psychological perspective
These reports pull together the data about deaths by suicide for the UK and Republic of Ireland, which is available from official statistics bodies and provides a description of the latest suicide rates. They also provides information about the challenges we have with suicide data, guidance about how to (and how not to) use statistics, and the differences between how the individual countries produce the final suicide statistics.
Samaritan suicide statistics report 2019 – using data from 2018
Samaritans suicide statistics report 2018 – using data from 2017
Samaritans suicide statistics report 2017 – including data for 2013-2015
