I’ve been looking in more detail at the 2023 suicide figures from ONS, published this week.

They showed a 6% rise, giving us the highest national rate since 1999.

In fact, the detailed picture - by age, sex & where people live - is not simple.

Short 🧵 & TW

https://twitter.com/ons/status/1775803319111327931

First, an essential reminder that no suicide rate is acceptable. Whether figures are rising or falling, they are too high.

These are preventable deaths not prevented.

Key stat in today’s suicide update from @ONS is about young people.

Suicide rates in young age groups rose steadily from c.2010. They have been a top prevention priority.

New figs confirm a different trend. Rates since 2018 are stable - not falling but the rise has stopped. Why did suicide rise in young people? Some point to ⬆️ depression, income inequality, social media.

Our study of <20s highlighted cumulative risks (graph shows escalating rates in late teens): abuse, bereavement, bullying, self-harm.

Did these factors explain an increase?

New @ONS data give us, for first time, national suicide rates month by month for Covid years 2020 & 2021, compared to earlier years.

Graph shows no rise in these years overall, or any month, or any period of pandemic, including lockdown.

What can we learn from this? It may tell us something about the protective power of social cohesion, of looking out for each other, of community, with its message of acceptance & concern.

If so, we need to hang on to it. It hasn’t looked in strong supply lately.

New figures from @ONS show 5,275 suicides registered in England in 2022, a tragic total.

This means the national suicide rate is unchanged since 2018.

But in the detail there are important new figures on young people.

Short 🧵 & TW. First, your regular reminder that these statistics & graphs represent real lives lost.

And that no suicide rate, high or low, rising or falling, is acceptable.

Manston, “invasion”, turning back boats, Rwanda. Complex issues like migration, involving vulnerable people, are rarely solved by getting tough, let alone talking tough.

Example from #mentalhealth. 10yrs ago prison policy was made more severe (remember the ban on books?). 1/6 This was meant to appeal to a section of the electorate who, misled by the media, saw prisons as too soft.

“Privileges” were curtailed.

What happened next may not have been cause & effect. Other factors may have played a part. But the timing was exact. 2/6

How can students & families tell how well a university is doing on suicide safety?

Does it talk credibly about a mentally healthy campus?

Check student/staff surveys: does experience match rhetoric on bullying, disability, international students, management style?

Short 🧵 1/5 Are all staff - academic & admin - trained in mental health & #suicideprevention?

So that if a student doesn’t hand in an essay, will they be seen as under-performing or will someone check they’re ok?

Is the physical environment safe?

2/5

Plenty of justified outrage following #BBCPanorama’s film of staff abusing patients in a secure mental health unit.

It made headline news. Investigations are under way. Staff have been suspended.

But outrage alone will not prevent a repeat.

Short 🧵 & TW. Many felt weary over a too-familiar story.

That was my reaction. 5y ago I wrote about how my mother was assaulted in a care home - the perpetrator was erased from their professional register thanks to evidence from other staff.

No action was taken against the care home itself.

Been asked for data sources re my #suicideprevention talk at #RCPsychIC. Mainly @ONS & my research unit @NCISH_UK - link to our website.

Short 🧵 on our research findings.

sites.manchester.ac.uk/ncish/ First, important reminder that graphs & data represent real lives lost, families devastated.

Discussion on Twitter this week of suicide rate in doctors, after widely-reposted tweet claiming rate in this country to be several times higher than in general population.

This is untrue in England (UK data not available).

It’s worth looking at the figures.

Short 🧵 & TW. First, a reminder that suicide statistics are real people, lives cut short, preventable deaths not prevented.

No figure, high or low, is acceptable.

Latest suicide figures for England are just published, giving us rates for the final 3 months of 2021, based on deaths registered post-inquest. Headline message: no change from previous years. But there’s something troubling there too.

Short 🧵 & TW.

https://twitter.com/ons/status/1511990122090315783

First thing to say, always, is that these figures are not dry data. They are real lives tragically lost, preventable deaths, devastated families. We should never forget this.

Often asked for advice on managing a suicide cluster.

Clusters - where there is a link between deaths - are not unusual.

They cause understandable anxiety in those handling them who may be taking urgent actions on limited information.

Short🧵 & TW. Links between deaths vary. They may be direct & causal, when one tragedy triggers another. Or indirect via shared circumstances or method.

Clusters occur more in young people & settings like schools & universities but also mental health units. The connections may also be online.

It’s become common to see an academic dropping off Twitter to escape abuse.

It starts with a tweet or media appearance commenting on evidence from their field of study. Someone takes exception to their message, outrage spreads. Their timeline becomes a torrent of hostility. This is hardly unique to researchers. Twitter is a bear pit.

Public engagement is part of the academic job. Funders expect it. A #publichealth crisis demands it. Yet we have calls for Covid scientists to #resign. One expert’s bio says simply: I block.
How did it come to this?

In 2021 #suicideprevention will remain vital to the #Covid response, so this is a good time to sum up what we know re the impact on suicide. Simple answer is that several countries have now reported no rise. But the picture is more complex, as always with suicide stats. /thread First, it’s important to stress that graphs & data represent real lives tragically lost. No suicide rate, whether high or low, rising or falling, is acceptable. Even before Covid there were over 6000 deaths by suicide per year in the UK.

Suicide in several countries, inc England, didn’t rise after lockdown - see @bmj_latest this wk. Yet many studies have shown poorer mental health. How do we square these findings? Answer matters to #SuicidePrevention in next phase of the pandemic. /Thread

bmj.com/content/371/bm… I should stress it’s not unusual for rates of mental ill-health & suicide to diverge. Most surveys of anxiety or depression find higher rates in women but suicide is 3x more common in men.

Today we have released suicide data for 2020 covering several parts of England, total population 9 million. The month by month figures are reassuring: they show no rise in suicide following lockdown.

Today’s tweets & a few more as a thread. @NCISH_UK
documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?D… As always when we present graphs & data, we want to stress that these numbers represent real people, real lives lost, real families devastated. We work a lot with bereaved families & never forget the individual tragedies that lie behind our statistics. @NCISH_UK

There are frequent claims in the press & on social media about rising suicide rates. Which means a regular need to clarify: we don’t yet know the impact of Covid-19 & lockdown on the national suicide rate.

Why is this difficult? And what can we say so far?

/thread Important to stress that if suicide rate goes up - or if it doesn’t - it’s in public interest for press to raise it & for public to know. But there’s also risk of causing distress to vulnerable people & a need to report responsibly.

And then there is the issue of evidence. /2

No shortage of social media comment about suicide over the weekend but few researchers joined in & those who did called for caution from everyone else.

And with good reason. Research evidence warns that media coverage can put others at risk. jech.bmj.com/content/57/4/2…

Thread/1 Main concern is imitative suicide, when one death leads to another in similar circumstances. Imitative suicide happens when the second person identifies with the first. It is more likely in young people and after the deaths of celebrities. /2

What to conclude from today’s suicide figs? Tragic that rates rose in UK in 2018, really from late 2017, reversing fall of prev 4yrs. Although highest rates are in people in their 40s/50s, main rise is in young people. In fact, rise in suicide in young people is not new. Teenage suicide rates have been rising since around 2010, continuing despite falling rates in other age groups. Non-fatal self-harm in young people has also been rising.