Suicide and death by misadventure (FOI)Suicide and death by misadventure (FOI)
Produced by the Freedom of Information officeAuthored by States of Jersey and published on
26 May 2017.Request
A
How does the State categorise a death by suicide?
B
How does the State categorise a death by misadventure?
C
How do Jersey's death by suicide rates compare with Guernsey and the UK?
D
How do Jersey's death by misadventure rates compare with Guernsey and the UK?
E
I would like the answers to the following questions broken down year by year from 2006 to 2016:
- how many suicides have occurred each year
- how many of the suicide victims were known to suffer from mental health conditions
- how many / were any of the victims known to have received treatment or requested help for their mental health conditions
- how many deaths by misadventure occurred each year
- how many victims of death by misadventure were known to have mental health conditions
- how many / were any of the death by misadventure victims known to have received treatment or requested help for their mental health conditions
F
Since 2006, what is the most common way people have died from death by misadventure?
G
Since 2006, what is the most common way people have committed suicide?
H
How many suicides have occurred, so far, in 2017?
I
How many deaths by misadventures have occurred, so far, in 2017?
Response
The response assumes the following context for the usage of the terms suicide and misadventure used in the request. The finding of an inquest in England and Wales is usually given as a short-form conclusion, which may be one of the following: accident or misadventure, alcohol / drug related, industrial disease, lawful killing, natural causes, open, road traffic collision, stillbirth, suicide. The finding of an inquest in Jersey, is given in a narrative form.
However, for statistical purposes for the Jersey Court Service Annual Report, these findings are re-classified into the short-form conclusions used in England and Wales. The Jersey Court Service Annual Reports are available from the following page:
Judicial Greffe reports and documents
A
Death by suicide is a finding or conclusion of the inquest process. All deaths in Jersey are subsequently categorised by the Health Statistics Unit of the States of Jersey by reference to the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) coding. The UK ONS definition of suicide varies slightly from that used by the coroner at inquest; for details see the explanation accompanying the statistics on the ONS site at the following link:
Suicides in the UK Statistical bulletins
B
“Misadventure” is a possible short-form conclusion of an inquest in England and Wales and although there remains uncertainty about its definition, it is considered to be a sub-set of accidental death.
There is no separate categorisation of death by misadventure in Jersey other than for the statistical purposes described in the response above where it is included in the figures for accidental deaths.
C
The comparisons of Jersey suicide rates with those of Guernsey and the UK that we hold in our records are already publicly available as part of the series of Health Profile reports published on www.gov.je. As such they are absolutely exempt under Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011. See more details in the exemptions and refusals section below.
The Health Profile reports can be found at the following link:
Health Profile reports
In addition further information about Guernsey and UK is available at these pages:
Public Health Information
Coroners statistics 2016
Suicides in the UK Statistical bulletins
D
We do not hold any records in response to this request. Note that as described above “misadventure” is not separated out from the short-form conclusion “accident or misadventure”; the figures for “accident or misadventure” which are extracted from the narrative findings of Jersey inquests are publicly available in the Jersey Court Service Annual Report.
E
1. The figures we hold which have been coded according to current UK ONS categories are as follows:
- 2006 – unavailable as the methodology changed in 2006. Insufficient detail in earlier coding to give exact numbers.
- 2016 – Currently unavailable as these have not yet been coded
2. Extracting this information would require retrieval, reading and analysis of all inquest records for the period requested. This would take in excess of 12.5 hours and therefore Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies. See more details in the Exemptions and refusals applied section below.
3. 54 individuals whose deaths were coded as suicide from 2007 to 2015 were known to have accessed mental health services from 2005 onwards. Due to the small numbers involved, it is not possible to provide a further breakdown; to do so would risk unfairly disclosing personal data of identifiable living individuals and is therefore exempt under Article 25 of the Freedom of Information Law. See more details in the exemptions and refusals section below.
4. We do not hold any information in response to this request. Note that as described above “misadventure” is not separated out from the short-form conclusion “accident or misadventure”; the figures for “accident or misadventure” which are extracted from the narrative findings of Jersey inquests are publicly available in the Jersey Court Service Annual Report.
5. We do not hold any information in response to this request. Note that as described above “misadventure” is not separated out from the short-form conclusion “accident or misadventure”.
6. We do not hold any information in response to this request. Note that as described above “misadventure” is not separated out from the short-form conclusion “accident or misadventure”.
F
We do not hold any information in response to this request. Note that as described above “misadventure” is not separated out from the short-form conclusion “accident or misadventure”.
G
We do hold this information but refuse to provide it because we consider it to be qualified exempt information under Article 38 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 ‘Endangering the safety or health of individuals’.
Following a prejudice test, we consider the exemption covered by Article 38 to be engaged and, following a public interest test, we judge the public interest in disclosing the information is outweighed by the harm to individuals which would, or would be likely to result from its disclosure. See more details in the exemptions and refusals section below.
H
We do not hold any information in response to this request. 2017 inquests are still open and the exercise of preparing UK style short-form conclusions from the Jersey narrative findings for the Jersey Court Service Annual Report has not been undertaken.
I
We do not hold any information in response to this request. Note that as described above “misadventure” is not separated out from the short-form conclusion “accident or misadventure”; the figures for “accident or misadventure” which will be extracted from the narrative findings of Jersey inquests in 2017 will be publicly available in the Jersey Court Service Annual Report for 2017 which will be published in 2018 once all the information for 2017 is available.
Exemptions and / or refusals applied
Article 16 – A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive.
(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.
Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information
Article 23 – Information accessible to applicant by other means
(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.
(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.
Article 25 – Personal information
(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.
(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –
(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and
(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.
Article 38 – Endangering the safety or health of individuals
Information is qualified exempt information if its disclosure would, or would be likely to –
(a) endanger the safety of an individual; or
(b) endanger the physical or mental health of an individual.
Prejudice Test
To engage this exemption we have first conducted a prejudice test to determine whether the harm to an individual described by Article 38 would occur if we were to disclose the information.
We identified the individual as a person who may be susceptible to completing suicide. We have considered whether there is a causal link such that disclosure of the information by us would, or would be likely to (a) endanger the safety of that individual or (b) endanger the physical or mental health of that individual. We have investigated and found that extensive published research and media guidelines support the proposition that publicity for a method of completing suicide has a causal link to individuals adopting that method as a way of completing suicide. This endangers both the safety of those individuals and their physical or mental health. We therefore conclude that the Article 38 exemption is engaged.
Public Interest Test
Since the exemption which is engaged is a qualified, not an absolute, exemption we have conducted a public interest test as required by Article 9(2) to assess whether, in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in supplying the information is outweighed by the public interest in not doing so. We judge that the public interest in raising public awareness of the most commonly used method of completing suicide is outweighed by the public interest in avoiding the risk of an individual being caused to adopt that method to complete suicide. We therefore refuse to supply the information.
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