Strictly Spades Shovels Statistics and Suicide

photo credit: futureshape

Suicide is one of the greyest areas of statistical reporting. Often findings on autopsy or by coroner will read death by misadventure, an open finding, asphyxiation, blood loss.

It is time for us to call a spade a spade. It does not save the family any more pain by having suicide written on the death certificate or autopsy report. Suicide is paid by most insurance companies after a waiting period of 12 months. There is no need to hide this anymore.

In effect what it does do, is hide an epidemic in rhetoric and grey language. We cannot plan for services without accurate reported numbers of actual deaths by suicide. We need clear language and clearer statistics to make any real inroads into this issue. It’s not enough to have anecdotal evidence, even though in the right forum this can be influential and relevant.

When people crunch numbers for health services (that would be me) we look at reported cases, services available, cost to provide service versus the need for service and the cost benefit to the community. From a realistic economic point of view it’s cheaper not to bother. But thankfully we are human (for this decade at least) and can’t let our brothers and sisters die due to mental illness. At least that is what I used to think and desperately try to believe but the evidence speaks differently.

As I’ve spoken about before, I will mention here again. We simply CANNOT allow suicidal and manically depressed patients to leave hospital with a script and an appointment for review on their own reconnaissance to take their medication and feel better in six weeks time. The statistics are grey, think died by misadventure in front of a train after they ‘fell’ from a bridge etc., but evident nonetheless. People don’t make it. They turn to a system for help and find emptiness. They wait months for appointments. And find emptiness. It is far cheaper and much more Darwinian of the community, to let these people die.

I urge the government to urgently review statistical reporting of suicides so that services can be planned and for those who we are still able to help, find something to hold onto rather than emptiness. Cancer diagnoses are not put on medication for six weeks and hope the problem goes away on medication and neither should mental health or depressive illnesses. These diseases are all time bombs, but cancer has better press.

Carry on.