Suicide: by local authority

This page provides a breakdown of suicide (deaths from intentional self-harm and events of undetermined intent) by local authority area.

The downloadable file Suicide: Local authority overview 2016 (189KB) presents numbers, crude rates and European age-standardised rates (EASRs) for 5-year periods from 1986-90 to 2011-15 (old and new coding rules), for persons, males and females (Tables 1-4). In addition, the Annual deaths worksheet presents suicide numbers by local authority by year, from 1982 to 2015, with the figures from 2011 onwards based on both the old and new coding rules (Table 5).

Several local authorities had a significantly different overall suicide rate in 2011-15 than rest of Scotland, with Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, East Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire, Perth and Kinross, South Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire having a significantly lower rate and Clackmannanshire, City of Edinburgh, Highland and Inverclyde having a significantly higher rate.

There are considerable fluctuations over time in the EASRs for local authorities. Comparing the overall rates in 1986-90 and 2011-15, Aberdeenshire, Glasgow City, Perth and Kinross, and South Ayrshire all showed a significant decrease, while no local authority had an increased rate.

Further local authority data (including 5-year moving average numbers) are available from the vital events reference tables on the National Records of Scotland (NRS) website.

For background information on the use of annual rates and rebased populations, please see the Suicide Statistics technical paper.