Mental health: suicide
Suicide is one of the main causes of premature death in Scotland. In 2021, there were 753 probable suicides, down from 805 in 2020. These figures are based on the new coding rules introduced by the National Records of Scotland (NRS). The corresponding estimates based on the old coding rules are 752 suicides in 2021 and 802 in 2020. A full description and analysis of suicide in Scotland is available on the ScotPHO suicide pages.
Further information is also available as part of the Scottish Burden of Disease (337 KB) results and on the National Records for Scotland suicide section.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
