OVERVIEW
External causes of death are required to be examined by a Coroner, who investigates both the mechanism by which a person died, and the intention of the injury (whether accidental, intentional or assault). For a death to be determined a Suicide, it must be established by coronial enquiry that the death resulted from a deliberate act of the deceased with the intention of ending his or her own life (Intentional self-harm).
Coronial processes to determine the intent of a death (whether intentional self harm, accidental, homicide, undetermined intent) are especially important for statistics on Suicide deaths because information on intent is necessary to complete the coding under ICD-10 coding rules (see Explanatory Note 75). Coroners' practices to determine the intent of a death may vary across the states and territories.
For deaths registered in 2008, 561 deaths were the subject of ongoing coronial investigations at the time ABS data was finalised, and had insufficient information recorded on NCIS in order to be able to determine any cause of death. These records have been coded to Other ill-defined and unspecified causes of mortality (R99). Some of these deaths may be determined a Suicide after further investigation.
Suicide can be defined as the deliberate taking of one's life (Butterworths Concise Australian Legal Dictionary, 1997, Butterworths Sydney). To be classified as a Suicide, a death must be recognised as being due to other than natural causes. Detailed information (including flow charts) on how deaths are coded as Suicide by the ABS can be found in Explanatory Note 75.
Data for 2008 have been positively impacted by process improvements. As a result, there has been an increase in quality in relation to assigning unspecified cause codes to coroner certified deaths. As a large number of coroner certified deaths are due to External causes of death, these process improvements have had the effect of improving the quality of these data, including Suicide data. See Technical Note 1: 2008 COD Collection - Process Improvements for further information.
In addition to process improvements, 2008 data will be subject to a revisions process. See Technical Note 2: Causes of Death - Revisions Process for further information. The revisions process, implemented for all coroner certified deaths registered from 1 January 2007, enables the use of additional information relating to coroner certified deaths 12 or 24 months after initial processing. This increases the specificity of the assigned ICD-10 codes over time. This process will also positively impact External causes of death data, including suicide data.
Due to the quality improvements and the revisions process, the increase in the number of deaths classified as Suicide between 2007 and 2008 may be overstated and users are advised to read the technical notes and use caution.
Further information on how the revisions process has impacted the 2007 data, (including suicide data) can be found in Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions.
This chapter contains summary statistics on Suicide deaths registered in Australia, where the underlying cause of death was determined as Intentional self-harm (X60-X84, Y87.0) or Suicide. Further information on Suicides is presented in the associated data cubes.
6.1 Suicides, Number of Deaths, 1999-2008 (a) (b) (c)(d)
Quality Declaration 
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