Counting and Accounting for Mental Health Related Deaths in England and Wales

Third, all of the data were systematically indexed, which involved breaking the matrices down in terms of the type and place of death, the type of death classification, age and gender. [...] Using the definition provided above, the category of provision appears to largely cover the thematic categories identified by the ONS (2023) in its research into deaths as a result of suicide of ‘access to services’ (identified in 32% of the PFDs analysed) and ‘assessment and clinical judgement’ (identified in 34% of the PFDs analysed). [...] The authors cannot be sure that all the PFDs about these deaths are forwarded to the relevant section in the Ministry of Justice, which is charged with posting them onto the Judiciary website, nor can the authors be certain that all of those that are forwarded are posted on the website or that they are posted to the correct tab on that website. [...] In the data set examined by the authors, 27% of the PFDs did not record the age of the deceased, which is similar to the amount of 39% recorded by Anthony et al. [...] At the time of writing this article, the NHS Essex Partnership University Trust is subject to a public inquiry into 1,500 MHRDs that was set up in the aftermath of the trust pleading guilty in court to failures relating to the preventable deaths of 11 patients.