The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has recently published suicide data by ethnicity in England and Wales (not Scotland) by comparing 2012-2019 death registrations and self-reported ethnicity from the 2011 Census (ONS 2021). Having previously reported only age and gender, this development casts a new light on the UK’s “male suicide crisis” for middle aged and young men (see Samaritans 2012; CALM 2019).
I have argued elsewhere that in light of the UK’s recent and historic immigration practice and policy which produces Britishness as synonymous with whiteness, that the paucity of ethnicity in suicide reporting and thus the prevention campaigns such statistics generate, translates to the male suicide crisis being a crisis for white men (Yue 2021b forthcoming). Like Cohen, Katona and Bhugra (2020), I have called for intersectional suicide reporting which includes ethnicity, in order to better reflect the reality of British people.
