New Zealand statistics on suicide

Our audit focuses on the information about suicides at a high level. We looked at information collected, analysed, and reported by the Chief Coroner and other coroners, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, and mortality review committees.

We found that a lot of data on suicide is publicly available. We haven’t been able to find a place where links to all of this public information are hosted, so we thought we could usefully do that here.

• Some of the information is high level, such as New Zealand’s country profile on the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which publishes information about the global burden of disease. It shows how the effects of suicide (self-harm) compare with other causes of death. There is a clever data visualisation tool that lets you compare data by cause of death (including suicide/self-harm) for countries of your choice. The Institute uses data supplied by New Zealand’s Ministry of Health.
• Statistical publications and data on suicide are available from the Ministry of Health. The reports are called Suicide Facts. The most up-to-date data is for 2013, which was published in November 2015.
• Statistical publications and data on mortality are available from the Ministry of Health. The reports are called Mortality and Demographic Data. The most up-to-date data is for 2013 and was published in December 2015.
• Statistics New Zealand published some data on suicide in its Serious Injury Outcome Indicator Reports, available through the Injury Information Portal. The most up-to-date data is for 2000-14 and was published in December 2015.
• The Chief Coroner releases data on suspected suicides – called Provisional Suicide Statistics – and it is available from the Ministry of Justice’s website for Coronial Services of New Zealand.
• The World Health Organisation also publishes suicide data.

In 2011, the Child and Youth Mortality Review Committee published a report on youth suicide as part of its Fifth Report to the Minister of Health.

The Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee discusses suicide in differing amounts of detail in its reports. Its sixth report discusses maternal death from suicides from 2006-2010 in more depth – starting on page 86.

A Suicide Mortality Review Committee was established as a trial to consider the benefits that might be gained from a mortality review focused on suicide. The committee has now published a report on its work.

Since the 1990s, the Ministry of Health has commissioned and published research reports on suicide, including a set of five reports on social explanations for suicide in New Zealand. You can find other publications by searching the Ministry of Health’s website using the keyword “suicide”.

Another source of information is Te Pou o Te Whakaaro Nui. You can browse the Resource Centre using the keyword “suicide” to find their reports, such as the summary of results and implications from the suicide prevention research programme, which Te Pou managed for the Ministry of Health between 2008 and 2012.

The Dunedin longitudinal study is another source of research information. You can find its reports by going to the Publications page and searching using the keyword “suicide”. You can also search for “suicide” in publications by the Christchurch Health & Development longitudinal Study.

Be warned, dear reader, that reading through this much information on such a difficult topic is not easy – and that’s something I’ll touch on in my next post.

Update (16 June 2016): You can now read our report Collecting and using information about suicide on our website.