Citation

Spittal MJ, Roberts L, Clapperton A. Crisis 2023; 44(6): 445-450.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, International Association for Suicide Prevention, Publisher Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

10.1027/0227-5910/a000931

PMID

37946504

Abstract

Many countries have now established, or are establishing, suicide monitoring systems (Baran et al., 2021). These systems typically use data from police reports and death certificates to identify suspected suicides, with key information about the deceased entered into a register soon after death. Information entered into the register may include the location of death and the deceased's place of residence, the geocoordinates of these locations, the age and sex of the deceased, and information about the method of suicide. Because information is entered soon after death, these registers act as real-time or near real-time surveillance systems.

Real-time suicide registers resolve the problem of timeliness that has hampered the use of vital statistics systems for suicide monitoring. Vital statistics are usually based on an investigation by a coroner, medical examiner, or other authority. These investigations are often lengthy - in Australia, it takes between 12 and 18 months for a determination by a coroner - meaning these data are too old to be used for responding to increases in suicide rates, increases at specific locations, or increases by emerging suicide methods.

As countries establish real-time suicide registers, there is now the potential to use these data sets to create opportunities for suicide prevention that have not previously existed. Specifically, the availability of real-time data means these registers have the potential to be used to detect any increases in suicides and that information can then be used to inform a rapid response. For this goal to be realized, however, we also need to undertake analysis of the registers in real time using tools appropriate for the detection of rare events like suicide. In this editorial, we discuss these issues in detail, drawing on our own experience in Australia.

Language: en