Suicide: introduction and policy context

Introduction

Many factors put individuals at risk of suicide, with four key groups of risk factors identified.

• Risks and pressures within society, including poverty and inequalities, access to methods of suicide, prevalence of alcohol problems and substance misuse, and changing trends in society such as marital breakdown.
• Risks and pressures within communities, including neighbourhood deprivation, social exclusion, isolation, and inadequate access to local services.
• Risks and pressures for individuals, including sociodemographic characteristics, previous deliberate self-harm, lack of care, treatment and support towards recovery from serious mental illness, loss (e.g. bereavement or divorce), and experience of abuse.
• Quality of response from services, including insufficient identification of those at risk.

Please note: When analysing suicide data, it is conventional to combine deaths by intentional self-harm with deaths of undetermined intent. Research indicates that most deaths of undetermined intent are likely to be suicides. We refer to the data as 'suicides' but the term 'probable suicides' may also be used to acknowledge the inclusion of deaths of undetermined intent.

Policy context

In 2022, the Scottish Government released the new suicide prevention action plan, Creating Hope Together: suicide prevention action plan 2022 to 2025, which sets out clear actions leaders at a national, regional and local level must take to transform society’s response and attitudes towards suicide.

One of the actions of the strategy is developing the evidence base, and it acknowledges the role of the Scottish Suicide Information Database (ScotSID), which links records of deaths from suicide with expanded information on demographics and prior contact with a range of health services.

The new Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy was published by the Scottish Government in June 2023.

Previous key policy documents include:

• In 2018, the Scottish Government published Scotland's Suicide Prevention Action Plan: Every Life Matters, which set out clear actions leaders at a national, regional and local level must take to transform society’s response and attitudes towards suicide.
• Within the Mental Health Strategy: 2017-2027 the Scottish Government makes commitments regarding mental health improvement, services and recovery, to ensure delivery of effective, high quality care and treatment for people with a mental illness, their carers and families. Many of the commitments will contribute towards prevention and the long-term reduction in the number of suicides in Scotland.
• In October 2020, the Scottish Government published its COVID-19: Mental Health - Scotland's Transition and Recovery Plan, which outlines its response to the mental health impacts of COVID-19. It addresses the challenges that the pandemic has had, and will continue to have, on the population’s mental health. The plan includes a series of commitments on suicide prevention.

Contact:

Public Health Scotland - Mental Health Analytics Team
Email: phs.mentalhealthanalytics@phs.scot.