Suicide statistics - re-publication of report
Media Release
8 September 2006
Suicide statistics - re-publication of report
The Ministry of Health is withdrawing its publication Suicide Trends New Zealand 1983-2003 due to the way in which hospitalisation data was reported in the document.
The suicide-related hospitalisation data refers to intentional self harm events. In Suicide Trends each individual person hospitalised for a self-harm event was counted once. However where a person was hospitalised more than once for a separate self-harm event, the additional events were not counted when they should have been. This situation resulted in an undercounting of the number of self-harm events.
The Ministry is taking the opportunity to add some additional data to the Suicide Trends report that was not available at the time of publication. This will make this a more useful suicide reference report for New Zealand.
As a result of the
changes to the hospitalisation data and the inclusion of new
data the Ministry will re-publish the complete report under
the title: New Zealand Suicide Trends: Mortality 1921-2003,
hospitalisations for intentional self-harm 1978-2004
The
expected publication date of this is early November.
Please note: The data in the original report was not incorrect, rather it was the way in which it was interpreted and written up. This occurred because this was the first time the Ministry had included hospitalisation data in this way. The error is regretted and the Ministry apologises for any confusion this may have caused.
Details of new
data being included:
The additional data relate to
extending the time series of the hospitalisation data and
the mortality data, in brief these are as follows:
Hospitalisation Data
The change: The time series for
hospitalised injury data will be extended to 1979-2004 (it
was 1983-2004).
The impact: Provide a longer time series
allowing the trends and patterns of self harm to interpreted
over a greater period of time
Mortality Data
The
change: The time series of the mortality data will be
increased from 1921-2003 (was 1983-2003) for age, gender and
method, although we are limited to the original time series
for ethnic breakdowns.
The impact: This will
dramatically increase the information value of this
document. The analysis of time trends can now be taken back
as far as is practicable allowing a greater insight into the
pattern and changing mode of suicide in New Zealand. This
will allow this document to be a standard reference for
suicide in New Zealand
ENDS