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Contact with emergency departments and hospitals in England before suicide death: a retrospective cohort study
  1. Frances Healey,
  2. Janine Gower,
  3. Matthew Fogarty,
  4. Gina Winter-Bates,
  5. Aidan Fowler
  1. National Patient Safety Team, NHS England, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Frances Healey; frances.healey{at}nhs.net

https://doi.org/10.1136/emermed-2024-214440

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    Suicide is a major global concern1 as well as a personal tragedy for each life lost and the friends and family bereaved by suicide. The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health2 publishes annual analysis of suicide deaths after contact with mental health (MH) services, but the level of contact with other healthcare services in the remaining suicide deaths in England2 was unknown. We aimed to identify the number of people not in the care of MH services who had attended the ED or been admitted to non-MH hospitals in the 30 days before their deaths, as those contacts represent potential opportunities for suicide prevention.

    This is a retrospective cohort study using routinely collected national data, linking death certification and healthcare activity datasets through pseudonymised patient identifiers. We performed descriptive analysis to identify suicide deaths occurring between April 2019 and March 2020. We linked those deaths …

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Carl Marincowitz

    • X @FrancesHealey

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.