Data in this report were obtained from the RTSSS database. Information is provided to RTSSS mainly by the four Welsh police forces and the British Transport Police, using a template developed by the British Transport Police for the National Police Chief’s Council Suicide Prevention Portfolio. Other sources include ad-hoc reports from services outside of Wales, the National Collaborative Commissioning Unit, and media reports.
Deaths by suspected suicide have been determined to be suspected suicides by the Police (see ‘suspected suicide’ in glossary).
Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 (WIMD) was used as the estimate of deprivation. It is the Welsh Government’s official measure of relative deprivation for small areas in Wales. It is made up of eight separate domains/types of deprivation: Income, Employment, Health, Education, Access to Services, Housing, Community Safety and Physical Environment.
The ONS mid-year estimates (MYE) were used as the denominator when calculating rates. The ONS is the official source of population sizes, produced annually, covering populations of local authorities, counties, regions and countries of the UK by age and sex. Denominator for rates were based on lower super output areas, MYE 2020.
The ONS Census 2021 data was used for estimating employment rates.
Location data were derived from postcodes, What Three Words and grid reference data provided by the data suppliers, on the British National Grid.
The rates referred to in this report are crude rates as they are most suitable to inform action, which is one of the aims of the RTSSS. A crude rate is the number of deaths by suspected suicide occurring in a population over a specific time period, expressed as the number of deaths per 100,000 of the population. Both the numerator (number of events) and denominator (mid-year population estimate) are based on the same geographical area and should be based on the same time period, however, 2020 mid-year estimates were used as these were the latest available for lower super output areas.
Region, health board, sex, age/sex, and deprivation rates are estimated rates. 95% confidence intervals around these rates were calculated to give an indication of the precision of the estimate of the rate.
For comparisons between:
and the all-Wales rate, the all-Wales rate is treated as an exact reference (no confidence interval). This is a widely adopted method for national level estimates, with the random error deemed negligible for large populations. If the confidence interval of the estimate lies outside of the all-Wales rate, then the difference is statistically significant. If the confidence interval of the estimate overlaps the all-Wales rate, the difference is not statistically significant.
For comparisons between two estimates such as:
non-overlapping confidence intervals between values indicate that the difference is unlikely to have arisen from random fluctuation (i.e. statistically significant). However, when the confidence intervals overlap, we cannot determine if there is a statistically significant difference or not by comparing confidence intervals alone, so a more exact test is required. The pairwise comparison looked at the difference between the rates and the 95% confidence intervals of the difference. When the confidence interval of the rate difference is above zero, the two rates are considered significantly different with 95% confidence. Therefore, where estimated rates are compared with each other, a difference is statistically significant if either:
Where appropriate, the mean (average) number of cases and standard deviation were estimated. It is expected that counts are within one standard deviation above or below the mean two thirds of the time. This gives a measure of whether there are counts or trends of concern.
Figures are for deaths that occurred during the stated time period and provide a timely indication of deaths by suspected suicide. This compares with official statistics which are published by year of registration, so the actual occurrence of those deaths may have been months or years prior.
The data collected are surveillance data so although we are able to provide more timely data than official statistics, the data is not as of high quality.
There is no trend data available, as only data from 1 April 2022 are available.
This report contains small numbers which are prone to fluctuation.
There are large confidence intervals around the rate estimates.
Deaths of all Welsh residents by suspected suicide may not be fully captured, because:
Data on ethnic group, sexual orientation and occupation were incomplete so were not included in this report.
Data on mental illness and whether the person was known to mental health services was largely based on data from Police systems not health systems, although some Police forces do include data from health systems in their data return to RTSSS and we are able to validate some, but not all, data on mental health services with other sources.
The extent of data capture may vary between Police forces as different systems are accessed to obtain data.
A list of data fields has been developed for the RTSSS but we are not yet able to collect all of the data, e.g. religion, disability status.