Methodology: near to real-time suspected suicide surveillance for England
How the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) puts together the data in its quarterly near to real-time suspected suicide surveillance reports.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
OHID publishes quarterly near to real-time suspected suicide surveillance for England (nRTSSS) statistics.
This document provides an overview of statistical approaches used in these reports, including:
- details of the data set used to produce these statistics
- how monthly suspected suicide rates are calculated
- how quarterly proportions of suspected suicides by method type group are calculated
- a summary of strengths and limitations of this approach to reporting
Updates to this page
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The methodology has been updated to: recognise the change in status of this reporting from ‘official statistics in development’ to ‘official statistics’; recognise that monthly DSR reporting is now presented for the most recent 25-month period - rather than the latest 24-month period as previously published; recognise that quarterly proportion reporting is now for the most recent available quarter only - rather than latest 5 quarters as previously published; and recognise the change in guidance when reporting on gender.
Update history
2026-04-30 09:30
Added an explanation of how rates for the most recent 3 months in the reporting period are compared to the same months in the previous years.
2025-10-30 09:30
Added paragraph to explain the approach on how the 6-months DSR range is calculated.
2025-07-31 09:30
The methodology has been updated to: recognise the change in status of this reporting from ‘official statistics in development’ to ‘official statistics’; recognise that monthly DSR reporting is now presented for the most recent 25-month period – rather than the latest 24-month period as previously published; recognise that quarterly proportion reporting is now for the most recent available quarter only – rather than latest 5 quarters as previously published; and recognise the change in guidance when reporting on gender.
2025-04-24 09:30
The methodology has been updated to explain how monthly rates calculations are adjusted to allow for differences in the number of days each month.