Question reference: S6W-05957
- Asked by: Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Date lodged: 27 January 2022
-
Current status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 8 February 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how many probable suicides there were in each year from 2017 to 2021, broken down by local authority and also given as an annual crude rate per 100,000 population.
Answer
National Records of Scotland (NRS) publishes figures on probable deaths by suicide annually. Figures for each year from 2017 to 2020 are provided on the NRS website, and this includes a breakdown by local authority areas at Table 5. The data is found here: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//statistics/probable-suicides/2020/suicides-20-all-tabs.xlsx
NRS plans to publish figures of probable deaths by suicides for 2021 in summer 2022.
NRS does not publish annual crude rates of probable suicides at a population level. Instead, it uses age-standardised rates which provide reliable comparisons across local authority areas by taking account of different demographic profiles. NRS publishes this data on a 5 yearly basis, rather than on an annual basis, to ensure the data does not disclose individual cases. Detailed information is available in figure 6 of the spreadsheet provided in the above link.