FOI reference: FOI-2024-1781
You asked
Please provide recent figures showing the number of suicides among police officers (sergeant and below) and senior police officers, England and Wales.
Do you have current figures that I could access for PTSD, depression, stress, burnout etc?
We said
Thank you for your request.
We hold the following dataset, Suicide by occupation, England and Wales, 2011 to 2021 registrations, which provides deaths involving suicide by occupation. Please note that the numbers detailed here cannot be used to ascertain the risk of suicide among occupations. Differences in numbers of deaths may merely reflect the underlying population structure as opposed to differences in risk.
Occupation is reported at the time of death registration by the informant and this information using the Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2010). This classification system has 4 levels of granularity, ranging from higher-level groupings to specific occupations. This includes:
1172 Senior police officers
3312 Police officers (sergeant and below)
3315 Police community support officers
Due to changes from Standard Occupation Coding (SOC) 2010 to SOC 2020, the 2022 data is currently under analysis and will be published in the future. As such, the information we hold for 2022 is exempt under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whereby information is exempt from release if there is a view to publish the information in the future. As a central government department and producer of official statistics, we need to have the freedom to be able to determine our own publication timetables. This is to allow us to deal with the necessary preparation, administration and context of publications. It would be unreasonable to consider disclosure when to do so would undermine our functions.
This exemption is subject to a public interest test. We recognise the desirability of information being freely available and this is considered by ONS when publication schedules are set in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The need for timely data must be balanced against the practicalities of applying statistical skill and judgement to produce the high quality, assured data needed to inform decision-making. If this balance is incorrectly applied, then we run the risk of decisions being based on inaccurate data which is arguably not in the public interest. This will have an impact on public trust in official statistics in a time when accuracy of official statistics is more important to the public than ever before.
You may also find our Prevention of Future Death Reports for Suicide submitted to coroners in England and Wales of interest.
If you wish to obtain 2009 to 2011 data, we have not conducted this analysis, but could create a bespoke request for you. Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources, and agreements of costs, where appropriate).
Such enquiries can be made to the HAPI Customer services team on: Health.Data@ons.gov.uk.
Unfortunately, we do not hold data relating to the prevalence of stress, burnout, or PTSD within police forces within England and Wales.
You may find the following independent studies of interest: