Rates of suicides among children and young people in England tend to increase over the summer exam period and are at their lowest during the start of the academic year, new figures suggest.
There are also “small significant differences” in the trends for males and females, with rates peaking in early May for females but not until early July for males.
The findings have been published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and are the first of their kind to look at deaths by suicide of children and young people across the academic year.
The study identified 4,315 suicide deaths that took place among people aged 15 to 25 in England from 2011/12 to 2021/22.
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To highlight possible trends or patterns, the ONS divided each academic year into fortnights, beginning on the first Monday of September and ending the following August.
The analysis found the rate of suicide fluctuated across the year, decreasing slightly during fortnights early in the autumn term before “generally showing an increased rate” in fortnights coinciding with the preparation and sitting of summer exams.
The highest rate among all children and young adults was 0.78 deaths per 100,000 people, in the 23rd fortnight in the year – typically just before the start of the summer holidays – while the lowest rate was 0.56 per 100,000 in the seventh fortnight of the year, in late November/early December.
There are “small significant differences” between the rates for males and females which appear when looking across the whole year, the ONS said.
The highest rate of suicide for females was in early May (fortnight 18), at 0.53 per 100,000 people.
This was “significantly higher” than the rate for females in early July (fortnight 23), 0.29 per 100,000 – the week when the highest rate of suicide occurred for males.
The figures for males range from a peak of 1.26 in early July to a low of 0.85 in late November.
The higher rates of suicide among males are in line with trends among the general population.
The ONS based its study on 11,741,290 children and young people, who were aged 15 to 25 at the end of the academic years across the period September 2011 to August 2022.
Of the 4,315 suicides identified among this group, 3,190 were male and 1,125 were female.
Some 570 of the suicides were aged 24 at the end of the academic year, the highest number across all ages, while 85 were aged 15.
The ONS cautioned that despite recent increases in the overall rate of suicide in children and young people, “we cannot draw meaningful conclusions from the variability of rates of suicide across the academic year, due to low numbers of suicides across the study period and wide confidence intervals around the rates”.
– Samaritans provides 24-hour support for people at risk of suicide. They can be contacted anonymously on 116 123 or at samaritans.org
