Suicide rates are twice as high in patients with deadly cancer, heart disease and COPD –

According to official data, terminally ill British people are twice as likely to commit suicide than healthy people.

A one-of-a-kind analysis by the Office for National Statistics found that risk increases significantly after a diagnosis’s devastating blow, but slows over time.

People battling cancer with low survival rates or heart and lung disease are up to 2.4 times more likely to take their own life the year after diagnosis, the report said.

Between 2017 and 2020, there were about 22 suicides for every 100,000 terminally ill cancer patients, compared to nine suicides per 100,000 in a control group of healthy people.

This rate was similar in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a group of lung conditions that cause breathing difficulties.

In the year following diagnosis, approximately 16 suicides were recorded per 100,000 patients with coronary heart disease, compared with 8.5 among those of the same age, education, and income level who did not meet the criteria.

More than 1.7 million people were diagnosed with one of the three biggest killers in the UK, during analysis conducted by then-health minister Matt Hancock in April last year.

The findings have rekindled the debate about assisted death.

The first such analysis from the National Bureau of Statistics found that risk increases significantly after the devastating blow of a diagnosis, but slows down over time.

ONS linked death certificates to 2011 census and NHS data from 1 January 2017 to 31 March 2020.

During that time, 17,195 people died from suicide, of which 2.6% also had COPD, 2.7% had heart disease, and 0.3% had fatal cancers, including cancer of the pancreas, lung, throat, and liver.

The ONS said health status was chosen because in most cases the diseases are progressive and cannot be reversed with treatment.

“In many cases, people diagnosed with these conditions will meet the definition of terminal illness,” the report said.

The rates in patients with the three conditions were compared with healthy people of similar origins, known as the matched control group.

Results showed that one year after being diagnosed with low-survival cancer, the suicide rate was 22.2 per 100,000 people.

This was 2.4 times higher than the suicide rate for matched controls, 9.1 deaths per 100,000 people.

There were 23.6 suicides per 100,000 COPD patients 12 months after diagnosis, compared with 9.7 in the healthy group, another 2.4-fold difference.

The suicide rate for heart disease patients was 16.4, almost twice that of the control group 8.5.

Marjorie Wallace, director of the mental health association SANE, said it was “inexcusable and inhumane” for dying people to resort to ending their lives as “lonely and abandoned”.

“For those approaching the end of life and wanting to ease the death process, their motivation is to shorten death, not shorten life, and therefore traditional suicide prevention measures are not an appropriate response,” he added.

Care Not Killing, a British alliance opposing a change in the law, said the numbers did not indicate a need for a change to the assisted death law.

Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of the group, said the figures instead suggest “more work needs to be done to support the dying and the vulnerable by giving them universal access to their physical and psychological needs”.

“This is not a short-term economic solution to the increase in the number of people who commit suicide or whose lives are taken over by the government, but means providing high-quality palliative care to all who need it. finished to make it easier.

For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116123 or visit samaritans.org.