Suicide and intentional self-harm – Australian Institute …

Suicide and intentional self-harm are complex and can have multiple contributing factors, yet with timely and appropriate interventions they may be preventable.

The AIHW recognises that each of the numbers reported here represents an individual. The AIHW acknowledges the devastating effects suicide and self-harm can have on people, their families, friends and communities.

This page discusses suicide and presents material that some people may find distressing. If this report raises any issues for you, these services can help:

Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day.

Mindframe is a national program supporting safe media coverage and communication about suicide, mental ill health, and alcohol and other drugs. Mindframe reminds media and communications professionals accessing this page to be responsible and accurate when communicating about suicide, as there is a potential risk to vulnerable audiences. Context is therefore important. Resources to support reporting and professional communication are available at: mindframe.org.au

See Improving suicide and intentional self-harm monitoring in Australia in Australias health 2020: data insightsfor information on how suicide data can be improved.

Suicide is the act of deliberately killing oneself (WHO 2014), while intentional self-harm is deliberately causing physical harm to oneself but not necessarily with the intention of dying. The latest statistics on suicide and intentional self-harm are presented, including incidence, trends over time and variations by sex, age and state/territory of usual residence. The main source of data is the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) national Causes of Death data set which presents deaths statistics based on year of registration of death. In this data set deaths are classified as suicide if the available evidence indicates the death was from intentional self-harm and are compiled based on the state or territory of usual residence of the deceased, regardless of where in Australia the death occurred and was registered (ABS 2019). See Causes of death.

The ABS collects demographic and cause of death information on all registered deaths in Australia from the states and territories. For reportable deaths (including deaths by suicide), causes of death are coded using information (coronial findings, autopsy, toxicology and police reports) from the National Coronial Information System (NCIS) database. As coronial processes can be lengthy and often not closed at the time ABS cause of death processing is finalised, the ABS undertakes initial processing with subsequent revisions. This enables coroners cases that remain open to be coded (using the World Health Organization International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision, known as ICD-10) as intentional self-harm (X60X84, Y87.0) if evidence available on the NCIS indicates the death was from suicide. However, if insufficient information is available, less specific ICD-10 codes are assigned. These cases are then reviewed 12 and 24 months after initial processing so that any change in information regarding the deceaseds intention to die can be updated. For the 2019 ABS Causes of Death release, 2018 and 2017 data are considered preliminary, 2016 data are revised and 20092015 data are final. Although many of the statistics presented here are preliminary, the observed patterns of distribution (for example, age and sex) described in this article are consistent with those observed for finalised deaths by suicide from 2009 to 2015.

In 2018, 3,046 deaths by suicide were registered in Australiaan average of about 8 deaths per daymore than two and a half times that of the national road toll in the same year (1,135 road deaths) (BITRE 2019).

Suicide was the leading cause of death among people aged 1544 in 20162018. See Causes of death. To some extent, this is due to the sound physical health of people in these age groups, with chronic diseases only beginning to feature more prominently among people aged over 45 (AIHW 2019).

Nonetheless, deaths by suicide are statistically rare events, with an age-standardised suicide rate of 12.1 deaths per 100,000 population in 2018.

Suicide and self-inflicted injuries was the third leading cause of premature death from injury or disease in 2015 (Figure 1), accounting for an estimated 5.7% of the total fatal burden of disease in Australia. The total years of life lost (YLL) due to suicide and self-inflicted injuries was estimated to be 134,100 years, behind coronary heart disease (262,000) and lung cancer (154,400) (AIHW 2019). Males experienced almost 3 times the fatal burden from suicide and self-inflicted injuries that females did (100,300 versus 33,800 YLL) (AIHW 2019).

Fatal burden is a measure of the years of life lost in the population due to dying from injury or disease. The YLL associated with each death is based on 2 factors: the age at which death occurs and the life expectancy (according to an aspirational life table)which is the number of remaining years that a person would, on average, expect to live from that age. The YLL is calculated by adding the number of deaths at each age, multiplied by the remaining life expectancy for each age of death.

Injuries or diseases that usually cause deaths at younger ages (for example, suicide and self-inflicted injuries) have a much higher average YLL per death than those that tend to cause deaths at older ages (for example, stroke and chronic kidney disease). Therefore, similar amounts of fatal burden can result from a small number of deaths occurring at young ages and a large number of deaths occurring at older ages.

Read the original here:

Suicide and intentional self-harm - Australian Institute ...