The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Karen Dunnell, dated 16 October 2007:
As National Statistician I have been asked to reply to your recent question asking how many suicides there were amongst children between the ages of 10 and 18 years in each of the last 10 years, broken down by year groups. (157790)
The table below contains numbers of suicides for those aged under 19 by single year of age in England and Wales from 1996 to 2005, the latest available year.
The definition of suicide used by ONS assumes that most deaths from "injury or poisoning of undetermined intent" at ages 15 and over are cases where the harm was self-inflicted but there was insufficient evidence to prove that the deceased deliberately intended to kill themselves. For this reason, ONS includes these in its suicide statistics for those aged 15 and over, along with deaths from intentional self-harm. The same cannot be assumed in deaths at ages under 15. There were no deaths in children aged under 13 with a suicide verdict for the period requested.
Suicide2 Suicide and injury/poisoning of undetermined intent3 13 years 14 years 15 years 16 years 17 years 18 years 1996 1 2 9 24 25 61 1997 1 4 6 27 28 42 1998 1 2 8 19 41 46 1999 1 1 7 20 37 57 2000 1 2 16 10 43 48 2001 1 4 8 17 29 45 2002 2 3 11 18 33 36 2003 2 1 4 16 27 36 2004 3 2 7 20 23 42 2005 1 0 6 14 17 34 1 Figures are for deaths occurring in each calendar year. 2 The came of death for suicide was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes E950-E959for the years 1996 to 2000, and Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes X60-X84for 200J onwards. 3 The cause of death for injury/poisoning of undetermined intent was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes E980-E989 excluding E9 88.8 for the years 1996 to 2000, and Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes YW-Y34 excluding Y33.9 where the Coroner's verdict was pending for 2001 onwards.