United Kingdom

4081 readers

84 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

Suicide rates in England and Wales reach highest level since 1999 (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 months ago by Emperor@feddit.uk to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

...

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ThePyroPython@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] zeet@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

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.

load more comments (3 replies)