Ministers have been urged to treat suicide as a public health crisis after the rate at which people killed themselves in England and Wales reached the highest level in more than two decades.
The official figures, described by the suicide prevention charity Samaritans as “worse than expected”, showed 6,069 suicides were registered in the two nations in 2023, up from 5,642 in 2022 and the highest rate since 1999.
Three-quarters of the deaths were of males, but the female suicide rate reached its highest level since 1994, according to the annual Office for National Statistics figures.
“Rates increased across all age groups compared to 2022, especially among those aged 45 to 64 years,” said Vahé Nafilyan, the head of data and analysis for social care and health at the ONS.
“Suicide rates either increased or remained unchanged in each of the nine English regions, but the north-west saw the largest rise.
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In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Not surprised about the older generation seeing an increase in suicide rates where, especially for some medical conditions around chronic pain, death is preferable to the NHS waiting list.
Whilst that’s a possible explanation, correlation does not imply causation. There are many other potential contributing factors (increased loneliness, economic hardship, acceptability of suicide, changes to how deaths by misadventure vs suicide are recorded, etc) and more research will be needed to identify which, if any, played a role in the observed change.
Isn’t NHS being systematically gutted and shoved into a more American healthcare model since Brexit?
It’s been happening before Brexit. The Tories hate the NHS and want to replace it, as you say, with a private healthcare system. However, saying so publicly would be political suicide so the NHS has been gradually privatised within by outsourcing backroom services to the private sector. Having said that Brexit has not helped the NHS.
Such privatisation has failed in a lot of cases.
Here’s a list of such services privatised.
The common phrase “The NHS will remain free at point of use” is used to side step accusations of privatising the NHS.
Privatisation through defunding
Sadly, it’s been mildly drifting that way since the 1990s - though the drifting has sped up quite a bit during most of the Tory Governments. Not sure if Brexit specifically sped things up again, but it wouldn’t surprise me.