Scottish suicide information database
A report from the Scottish Suicide Information Database

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) is the first ScotSID report to examine in detail the pathways of contact with healthcare services taken by the ScotSID cohort in the month prior to death. The aim is to identify the most common patterns of contact with a view to maximising opportunities for effective intervention to prevent suicide. Understanding what happens in the month prior to death is clearly of vital importance for achieving that goal.

Main points

• Two thirds (66.7%) of the ScotSID cohort (2011-2022) had no contact with the selected healthcare services in the month prior to death.
• More males (69.8%) than females (57.9%) had no contact with the selected healthcare services in the month prior to death.

Figure 1.1. shows a flow chart of the services contacted by the ScotSID cohort in the month prior to their suicide, the figure highlights movement from one healthcare service to another as well as the first service & last service contacted prior to suicide. A&E was the most common endpoint, whilst unscheduled care is the most common entry point for individuals in the cohort. Unscheduled care also had the highest number of episodes of contact in the month prior to death.

Close

Figure 1.1: Contact pathways of the 2011-2022 ScotSID cohort in the month prior to suicide

• Almost three quarters (73.9%) of those aged under 25 years old had no contact with the selected healthcare services in the month prior to death. This proportion steadily decreased with age; just over half (56.7%) of those aged 65+ years had no contact in the month prior to death.
• While those in deprivation quintile 1 (most deprived) form the largest proportion of the ScotSID cohort (32.5%), the difference between least and most deprived quintiles in proportions with no service contact was only 4.2% (64.7% and 68.9%, respectively).
• Unscheduled care was the most common entry point (first contact) (11.1% of the cohort), whereas A&E was the most common endpoint (last contact) (12.6%) in the month prior to death.

Background

This report (2024) on contact with healthcare services prior to suicide concentrates on the month before death and goes further than the 2015 report in three important ways:

• The data cover a more extended time period (12 years of deaths by suicide rather than four years).
• Contact with three unscheduled care services has been added.

The focus is on a detailed analysis of pathways of contact with healthcare services (rather than on prevalence of contact with these services) among members of the ScotSID cohort

Further information

The next release of this publication will be 6 May 2025.