Call for register to note suicide trends

The rates of suicide in Cork City and Limerick City were the highest in the country last year, prompting calls for a real-time suicide register to facilitate early identification of trends and clusters.

Figures released by the Central Statistics Office show that while the national suicide rate in 2012 was 11.1 deaths per 100,000, the rate in Cork City was as high as 25.6 per 100,000 and even higher in Limerick City, at 26.6.

The high regional rates were driven by male suicides. Cork City had the highest rate of male suicide in the country last year, at a staggering 43.5 per 100,000, nearly four times the national rate. In Limerick City, the male suicide rate was the country’s second highest, at 36.2 per 100,000.

Last night, national suicide prevention and url=http://www.console.ie/]bereavement charity Console[/url] said the figures gave “serious cause for concern”.

Console director Ciaran Austin said the data for Cork City, Limerick City, Wexford (rate of 21.2), and Mayo (rate of 19.9) was “disturbing” and highlighted the need for timely data to analyse what was happening.

He said Console supported the recent call by Kevin Malone of University College Dublin for the implementation of a real-time database to act as a register for suicide deaths.

“This would be one effective way to ensure early identification of trends and clusters, helping agencies and services to understand the specific problems and hopefully, respond sooner,” Mr Austin said.

Console offers counselling services and 24-hour helpline support to people in crisis and those bereaved by suicide (Freephone 1800 201 890).

Elsewhere, CSO figures for 2012 also shed light on our birth and marriage rates in 2012. The average age of mothers of Irish nationality was 32.3 years. There were eight births (0.01%) registered as being within civil partnership in 2012 and 25,344 births registered as outside marriage/civil partnership in 2012. This accounted for 35.1% of all births, an increase of 1.4 percentage points on 2011.

There were 72,225 births registered in 2012, 37,210 males and 35,015 females, a decrease of 2,425 on 2011.

Marriage rates were up last year. The number of marriages registered during 2012 was 21,245, equivalent to an annual marriage rate of 4.6 per 1,000 population, 0.3 per 1,000 population higher than in 2011.