Injuries: mortality
The Public Health Scotland publication Unintentional Injuries and the National Records of Scotland publication Accidental Deaths both report on deaths related to unintentional injuries in Scotland. Table 2 of the Unintentional Injuries publication provides details on cause of injury, location, and deprivation for deaths from unintentional injury.
Key points:
- There were over 2,700 deaths in Scotland in 2021 due to unintentional injury, accounting for 4% of all deaths in 2021.
- In 2021, the standardised mortality ratio was approximately 96% higher in the most deprived areas and 50% lower in the least deprived areas, compared to the Scottish average.
- Deaths due to accidental poisoning (including drug and alcohol overdose) have almost tripled since 2011, overtaking falls as the most common cause of death by unintentional injury in recent years. In 2021, the majority of deaths due to poisoning were in males.
- In 2021, over a third (35%) of deaths by unintentional injury in Scotland were in those aged 75+, whilst 53% were in those aged 24-64. Less than 1% of deaths were in those aged under 15.
Information about fatal injuries is also available on the workplace, road traffic, home, and fire injury pages.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
