Our dashboards make data on suicide rates and contributing risk factors easy to understand. Take a closer look at each UK nation, regions in England and work sectors, with employees at a higher risk of suicide. 

These dashboards will tell you:

  • What the data is
  • Where the data is sourced from
  • Why this data is important for suicide prevention work
  • What you can do next

This section is for those that want to know more about how our dashboards were developed, including where the data came from and it is represented in the dashboards.

Data sources

Data presented in the dashboards is gathered from multiple sources, including:

  • Office for National Statistics
  • Office for Health Improvement and Disparities
  • NHS Digital
  • Welsh Government Statistics
  • National Records of Scotland
  • Scotland Shiny Apps Dashboard
  • Scottish Government website
  • Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency
  • Northern Ireland Department of Health

Depending on the dashboard and data source you can view the data by:

  • UK nation
  • Region
  • Local authority
  • Local government district
  • Health and Social Care Trust (HSCT)
  • Lower Super Output Area (LSOA)

Colour codes

We have applied a simple colour code to the graphs in the dashboards. These highlight urgency of the action needed relating to risk.

Colour code used for the graphs:

  • Red – immediate action needed
  • Amber – urgent action needed
  • Yellow – action needed

These colour scales are applied by:

  1. Standardising the data by creating 'Z scores'. This involved taking each value, minus the mean average of the data, and dividing by the standard deviation.
  2. Ranking the standardised data in order from lowest to highest
  3. Splitting the data into five equal sections called ‘quintiles’
  4. The top quintile (top 20%) will be colour coded with the first colour (i.e. red or yellow as appropriate)
  5. The middle 60% is combined and coloured orange

It is important to remember that the colour coding applied is relative to the other data displayed, and that regions may have the same value but fall in different colour coded quintiles.

Accessibility

The data used in the dashboards is also available to download from the download data page.