National Suicide and Self-harm Monitoring System

The National Suicide and Self-Harm Monitoring System (the System) was established in 2020 to provide timely and accurate data and support national efforts to address suicide and self-harm in Australia. Using multiple sources, the System brings together key statistical data about suicide and self-harm in Australia that is regularly updated and hosted on the Suicide and Self-harm Monitoring sub-site of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s website.

The System contains information about:

• Deaths by suicide in Australia: Provides users with information about the total number of suicide deaths in Australia each year.
• Suicide registers: Provides users with information on timely data collected by Australian states and territories
• Intentional self-harm hospitalisations: Provides users with information about hospital admissions following a suicide attempt or self-harm.
• Ambulance attendances: Includes data from the Ambulance Surveillance System which helps to provide a more comprehensive picture of suicide and self-harm behaviours in Australia.
• Populations and age groups: This data provides users with specific information relating to priority groups.
• COVID-19: Provides comprehensive summary of a number of data sources to examine the impact of COVID-19 on mental health, psychological distress, suicide and suicidal behaviours in Australia.
• Geography: Allows users to view suicide and self-harm data in relation to geographic location.
• Behaviours and risk factors: Provides users with information about risk factors for suicide and self-harm.

Life in Mind hosts easy to understand summaries of key data releases and updates to the System as well as resources that can be used to understand and interpret the data and share key findings.