Child suicide rates during the COVID-19 pandemic in England

Abstract

Background: There is concern about the impact of COVID-19, and the control measures to prevent the spread, on children's mental health. The aim of this work was to identify if there had been a rise of childhood suicide during the COVID pandemic. Method: Using data from England's National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) the characteristics and rates of children dying of suicide between April and December 2020 were compared with those in 2019. In a subset (1st January to 17th May 2020) further characteristics and possible contributing factors were obtained. Results: A total of 193 likely childhood deaths by suicide were reported. There was no evidence overall suicide deaths were higher in 2020 than 2019 (RR 1.09 (0.80–1.48), p = 0.584) but weak evidence that the rate in the first lockdown period (April to May 2020) was higher than the corresponding period in 2019 (RR 1.56 (0.86–2.81), p = 0.144). Characteristics of individuals were similar between periods. Social restrictions (e.g. to education), disruption to care and support services, tensions at home and isolation appeared to be contributing factors. Limitations: As child suicides are fortunately rare, the analysis is based on small numbers of deaths with limited statistical power to detect anything but major increases in incidence. Conclusion: We found no consistent evidence that child suicide deaths increased during the COVID-19 pandemic although there was a possibility that they may have increased during the first UK lockdown. A similar peak was not seen during the following months, or the second lockdown.

Keywords

• Suicide
• children
• COVID-19
• Lockdown