Irish suicide data
In Ireland, the decision as to whether someone has died by suicide is a legal determination made by Coroners, not a medical decision by doctors or the HSE and there is a time delay in the availability of data.
Following the Coronial investigation, inquest and registration processes, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) publishes national mortality data, including data on deaths by suicide. All CSO data on suicide deaths is publicly available on their website www.cso.ie.
Annual data from the CSO is delivered in three stages;
- Provided firstly by year of registration – “provisional”
- Revised later, by year of occurrence – “official”
- Revised later again, to include “late registrations”.
For an up-to-date summary of suicide data, you can access briefing documents from the National Office for Suicide Prevention, here.
Irish self-harm data
The main source of Irish self-harm data is the National Self-Harm Registry Ireland (NSHRI). The NSHRI is operated by the National Suicide Research Foundation and funded by the NOSP.
It is the world’s first national registry of cases of intentional self-harm presenting to hospital emergency departments. The Registry fulfils a major objective in providing timely data on trends and high-risk groups for self-harm in Ireland.
