Number of suicides deaths and funding on suicide prevention programmes

The number of suicide cases by age group is publicly released in the Report on Registration of Births and Deaths by the Immigration and Checkpoint Authority (ICA) on an annual basis. The annual number of suicide cases by age group in the past five years is summarised at Table 1.   

Persons who are greatly distressed and attempt to take their own life require help and the criminal justice system may not be the best option to deal with attempted suicides. As of 1 January 2020, attempted suicide was decriminalised via the Criminal Law Reform Act 2019. The number of attempted suicides that the Police had attended to in the past five year is summarised at Table 2.

Suicide prevention spans several sectors including health, social and education, and are based on four key strategies: (1) building mental resilience, (2) encourage help seeking and early identification, (3) supporting at-risk groups, and (4) providing crisis support. Efforts under these strategies are integrated with mainstream mental health and well-being programmes implemented in various settings. These programmes received over $28 million from Government grants and community funds in Financial Year 2020.