In 2021, 2022, and 2023, I published charts of the number of reported suicides in the Isle of Man dating back to 2008, so that you can see the number of suicides in the Isle of Man in context to recent years.

This is the 2024 update which now includes data from 2023 which was reported by Manx Radio on the basis of data released by the Isle of Man Government. The underlying sources for each year are linked in the spreadsheet.

Some notes on this chart:

• The number of suicides in 2020 was an extraordinary outlier.
• The 14 suicides registered in 2023 was substantially above the mean from 2008-2018, but within a 95% confidence interval of ordinary statistical expectations (two standard deviations).
• It continues to be outrageous that the Government appears to only release this information (2021 and 2022, 2023 and 2024) in response to media outlets and other stakeholders activating their legal rights to such data under Freedom of Information requests.
• A professional government would publish such data proactively without waiting for an organisation to use the FOI system to extract the records.
• As before, there are conflicting reports on the number of suicides for various years. Part of the conflict may be due to different definitions. Primary sources used here are a Tynwald report and media reports. You can see the sources detailed here. If anyone has any better information, please do let me know!
• The reported surge for 2020 is more than 4 standard deviations from the previous mean, so it is certainly statistically significant (it is not just random noise).
• An undated statement from Public Health IOM in late 2020 or early 2021 confirmed a surge in local suicides during the 2020 calendar year: “There has been a large increase in suspected suicides in recent months above the baseline of previous years.“
• There is some doubt about whether some of the data relates to suicides which took place in certain years, or coroner findings of suicides which took place in certain years. I think that a suicide which took place in November, with a coroner’s finding in the subsequent February, would be listed in the year of the subsequent February.

If you, or someone you know, is at risk of suicide, please call Samaritans here on the Isle of Man. Their phone number is 116 123 (tap to call; free from any phone) and they have a branch at 5 Victoria Place, Douglas.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Source documents

The 2024 Freedom of Information response from the Isle of Man Government:

The 2023 Freedom of Information response from the Isle of Man Government: