This is a sub-category of all external deaths (see Map 5) and includes suicides and deaths for which the intent remains undetermined as to whether it was suicide or an accident. It is likely that the majority of undetermined deaths were in fact suicides but there was insufficient evidence to establish that the intent was definitely suicide.

Suicide rates tend to be higher in areas where people feel more isolated – in the centres of cities such as London, Brighton, Manchester and Glasgow, and in the remoter northern parts of Scotland. Rates are lowest in the more affluent parts of southern England where much higher than average proportions of people are in work and so are less isolated during the day, are better rewarded financially and are less likely to be single and as a result are less isolated outside of work. Furthermore, population turnover is lower so more people know their neighbours.

Outside of these general explanations of the geographical map of suicide, rates tend to be lower in areas where a higher proportion of people adhere to particular religions or denominations that view suicide as particularly transgressive.

Rates are also artificially elevated in Scotland because there the system of recording suicides initially labels more deaths as suicide than may be later found to actually be suicide, and it is an anomaly of this dataset that these deaths are not subsequently re-coded. To a small extent the inverse is the case in England and Wales where a coroner’s inquest or court proceedings can take so long that a death is not registered as a suicide in time to be included in the data used here.

The average age of death for this cause is 45.8 years. Seven out of ten of the deaths are male. The age–sex bar chart shows how the deaths are distributed across the age groups, with younger men being particularly vulnerable. The deaths in the youngest age groups will most likely be accidents where the intent is undetermined, rather than suicides.