Originally Posted by
Capn Rex Havoc
Lockdowns are causing more deaths from suicide in Australia as a result of economic hardships resulting from business collapses and stand downs than Octogenarians who have passed.
That contention is often repeated but there is little hard data to support it and some hard data that actually contradicts it.
Three states - Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria - have released their 2020 suspected deaths by suicide data for 2020. As the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
notes,
In all cases there is no evidence to date of any increase relative to previous years.
Suspected deaths by suicide in Victoria, the lockdown state of 2020, were essentially unchanged from the previous two years. In fact, the 699 suspected deaths by suicide for 2020 was slightly lower than in 2019 (718) and similar to 2018 (700). Moreover, if you look at suicides by month throughout the lengthy second 2020 lockdown (June - October), they average below the annual average for 2020.
New South Wales recorded a nearly 5 percent year-on-year drop in suspected deaths by suicide in 2020, with 898, as opposed to 944 in 2019.
The Queensland data is mixed. Noting that they have only reported for the first seven months of 2020 (to 31 July), the headline data shows a slight increase in suspected deaths by suicide for that period, 454, when compared to the 445 for the same period in 2019. Queensland Police Service reports for the same period indicate that
COVID-19 may have contributed towards 28 suspected suicides, through either or a combination of - affecting mood, coping, stress and anxiety; employment; social isolation; changes in access to healthcare support; relationship breakdown; and finances. Of note in that QPS reporting, "finances" was mentioned in only one case (relatedly "employment" was mentioned in 11 cases, which may have included the single "finances" case).
Any data-based discussion on suicide numbers and rates is hampered in the first instance by the fact that there is no national register. The states, except for South Australia, manage their own registers - South Australia doesn't have one at all. Secondly, there's the lag in reporting. Presently there is no good data for this year.
We won't see the national data for 2020 until around October this year but based on the numbers from the eastern states it is very likely that 2020 will have been only the sixth year since 2006 when suicides are down year-on-year against the prior year.