National Suicide and Self-Harm Monitoring System

The suicide monitoring system aims to increase transparency and access to information so that Australians can have a more informed understanding of suicide and self-harm to improve the ways we respond to suicide, helping us work towards zero suicides.

Safety

Everyone needs to be mindful of the sensitive nature of the information in the suicide monitoring system, and to take care of their mental health and wellbeing when engaging with this information.

Responsible reporting

Reporting the information in the suicide monitoring system without reference to Mindframe guidelines or without applying media codes of practice for safe reporting has the potential to cause harm. The principles of the suicide monitoring system advocate the safe and responsible use of the Mindframe guidelines when using, reporting and publishing statistics on suicide and self-harm. 

Latest data releases

The latest update in Nov 2022 includes the publication of a new data linkage study using the National Integrated Health Services Information Analysis Asset. This study analyses health service usage in the last 12 months of life by people who have died by suicide, and includes data from the Medicare Benefits Scheme, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Emergency Departments, and hospitalisations.

This release highlights patterns of health service usage that are important to consider for the planning and delivery of health-based services, programs, and interventions in support of suicide prevention.  

The National Suicide Prevention Office will utilise this data to highlight opportunities to work with governments to improve health-based policy and practice to better identify people experiencing suicidal crisis or those that have self-harmed and ensure they receive compassionate integrated health care.  

The release also highlights that many people who die by suicide have very limited or no use of health-based services. This highlights the real need for the National Suicide Prevention Office to work with governments to shift the responsibility for suicide prevention to include an all portfolio and all governments approach that provides support to people wherever they are.

Consultation with young people

The National Suicide Prevention Office and the AIHW partnered with Orygen to hear from young people about their needs for suicide information and their experience of the Suicide and Self-Harm Monitoring System Website.

What we heard was that young people want to increase their knowledge of suicide to help themselves and their community and the website was a useful resource to do this.

We also heard the website’s accessibility, functionality and level of engagement could be enhanced for a young person’s audience, which the AIHW are currently working on.

The National Suicide Prevention Office and the AIHW would like to thank each participant for their insights and advice, and Orygen for the support provided to the consultation.

About the suicide monitoring system

The suicide monitoring system website brings together, for the first time, data on suicide, intentional self-harm, and suicidal behaviours from a range of national data sources and surveys. The data is presented in an accessible way and includes interactive data visualisations and geospatial mapping to illustrate and explore the statistics, as well as explanatory text to assist with their interpretation and communicate the limitations of the data.

The suicide monitoring system website content will be regularly updated as new data become available, and further data sources will also be added as they become available from data development activities.

The suicide monitoring system also includes an Analyst Portal (the Portal) for the sharing of content from Commonwealth and jurisdictional data custodians and other approved users, such as Primary Health Networks, NGOs and researchers. The purpose of the Portal is to compliment data that is publicly available on the website by providing authorised users access to data that is presented in a way that has specific utility for those involved in planning and providing responses for suicide prevention. The information provided through the website and the Portal enables policy makers and service providers to identify emerging trends and priority populations to support timely policy decisions and localised planning of suicide prevention activities.

The Portal is managed by the AIHW and includes national morbidity, mortality, and ambulance data, with states and territories able to contribute other data, such as emergency department, suicide register or police data. The Portal is currently under development and the AIHW and national Suicide Prevention Office are working collaboratively with jurisdictions, Primary Health Networks, NGOs and researchers to determine:

• What data can be made available in the Portal
• How this data gets into the Portal
• What analyses are needed and can be performed in the Portal
• Who needs to access the Portal.

The National Suicide Prevention Office established a Portal Working Group to develop guidelines for making decisions about who can access the Portal, what data should be in the Portal and for what reason. The guidelines were delivered by the working group to the AIHW in December 2021. Contributing to the development of the Portal were the members of the suicide monitoring system’s Expert Advisory Group and people with lived experience of suicide.

Principles

To ensure the suicide monitoring system continues to inform improvements in both community awareness and prevention of suicide and self-harm, the National Suicide Prevention Office led the development of a set of principles to guide the decisions about what data is included in the system and how it is accessed. The principles were co-developed with input from the Expert Advisory Group and people with lived experience of suicide. For more information see Principles for the system.

Lived Experience

People with a lived experience, including those who have attempted suicide, those bereaved by suicide or affected by suicide, have a valuable, unique, and legitimate role in suicide prevention.

The National Suicide Prevention Office lead a Lived Experience Working Group to support the suicide monitoring system. Members of this group play an important role in the development and presentation of the data on the website, the development of the Portal, and will continue to provide critical insights into how we can improve the suicide monitoring system to better prevent suicide in Australia.

Here are a couple of our Lived Experience working group members talking about their contributions to the development of the suicide monitoring system.

Expert Advisory Group members

The National Suicide Prevention Office manages an Expert Advisory Group for the suicide monitoring system to support the development, implementation, and application of the monitoring system by providing advice as required.

The membership of the Expert Advisory Group includes representation from suicide prevention experts, academics and researchers, service providers, and people with lived experience.

• Dr Michael Gardner, Chair, Head, National Suicide Prevention Office
• Dr Jaelea Skehan, Member, Director Everymind
• Mr Alan Woodward, Member, National Mental Health Commissioner
• Dr Grant Sara, Member, NSW Ministry of Health
• Ms Nieves Murray, Member, CEO, Suicide Prevention Australia
• Ms Nicky Bath, Member, CEO, LGBTIQ+ Health Australia
• Associate Professor Jo Robinson, Member, Head Suicide Prevention Research, Orygen
• Ms Leilani Darwin, Member, Centre of Best Practice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention
• Mr Mark Davis, Lived Experience representative
• Dr Nerida Volker, Lived Experience representative

EAG meetings to date

The Expert Advisory Group has met quarterly between November 2019 and July 2022.