A tragic rise in suicide rate
Somerset has recorded its highest number of suicides for at least 20 years.
A total of 78 people were recorded to have died by suicide in Somerset in 2021, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
That’s up from 68 in 2020, 73 in 2019, 65 in 2018, and 48 in 2017.
It’s also the highest number of any of the last 20 years, with the highest number previously 73 in 2019. However, the ONS has attributed the sharp increase in suicides registered in 2021 to administrative delays caused by the pandemic, with many suicides which took place in 2020 only being registered in 2021. Suicide figures for a calendar year are based on the date the death was registered as a suicide, as opposed to the date of the death itself.
The pandemic has seen an increase in delays between a death taking place and an inquest being held. Across England and Wales, the average delay between death and inquest in 2021 was 186 days, up from 166 days in 2019. In Somerset, meanwhile it was actually down from 139 days in 2019 to 119 days in 2021.
The increasing number of suicides registered in our region is proportionally much larger than it is across the country as a whole.
There were 5,583 suicides in England and Wales in 2021. That’s up 7% from 5,224 in 2020, but was fewer than the 5,691 suicides in 2019, which is the highest number in the last 20 years.
Men are almost three times as likely to take their own lives as women. Last year in England, 3,852 men and 1,367 women died by suicide. That works out at a rate of 15.8 per 100,000 men and 5.5 per 100,000 women. That’s up from 15.3 per 100,000 and 4.9 per 100,000 respectively in 2020.
Lourdes Colclough, Head of Suicide Prevention at Rethink Mental Illness, said: “Suicide is a complex issue, but we must recognise the role we all have to play in suicide prevention, including government, and crucially the need to tackle many of the risk factors for suicide such as debt, financial stress and housing instability, which are affecting more people as the cost of living crisis deepens.”