Suicide: by NHS board

This page provides a breakdown of suicides (deaths caused by intentional self-harm and events of undetermined intent) by NHS board area, based on the boundaries at 1 April 2014.

The downloadable file Suicide: NHS board overview 2016 (131KB) 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 NHS board by year, from 1982 to 2014, with the figures from 2011 onwards based on both the old and new coding rules (Table 5).

In 2011-15, the rates in NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Grampian and NHS Tayside were significantly lower than the rates in the rest of Scotland, while the rates in NHS Lothian and NHS Highland was significantly higher.

There is considerable fluctuation over time in the EASRs for the NHS Board areas. Comparing overall suicide rates in 1986-90 and 2011-15, NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS Grampian, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Highland and NHS Tayside all showed a significant decrease, while no board had an increased rate.

Further NHS board data (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, rebased populations and NHS board area geographies, please see the Suicide Statistics technical paper.