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Demos, collected and provided evidence of suicide deaths that the coalition would not be because without complete information can not establish the best policies

observation is no doubt that the suicide rate in England remains a major challenge for public health. While suicide rates have been generally declining since the 1990s, the recent economic uncertainty has coincided with an increase in suicide rates in 2008 and 2009. The 2009 figures show that 4390 people aged 15 years died by suicide in the same year in England, giving about one death every two hours.

Suicide remains a major problem for public policy and last month, the coalition government has published its new strategy for suicide prevention in the consultation. Most notable in this strategy is that it differs very little from those published by the Labour government in 2002. Although nine years have passed, the same five groups identified as "high risk" of suicide: people who use mental health services, people who have self-harm, people involved in the system criminal justice, adult males under 50, and in particular occupational groups, including physicians, nurses, veterinarians and farmers. The strategy explains that these groups are chosen because they are known to have a statistically higher risk of suicide and data already collected in a systematic manner, allowing the number of people who die by suicide in these groups to be monitored.

collection of quality data on suicides is essential for the development of good policy for the prevention of suicide. However, research published today by Demos found that the suicide data are collected at the national level is actually quite limited. In particular, no national data are available to all in the number or type of people who die by suicide have a chronic or terminal. This lack of control might be understandable if there was no evidence that physical illness put people at increased risk of suicide. However, a large body of international research, and a smaller number of local origin studies have linked a variety of physical diseases with an increased risk of suicide, including cancer, motor neuron disease, and people who suffer from multiple conditions. Not so much a lack of evidence that is driving this political failure, but the lack of desire to improve data collection.

Demos research shows that there is currently a lack of will - both locally and nationally - to gather solid evidence of suicide rates with a serious physical illness is necessary to design strategies to address this problem. In our report, published Tuesday, asserting that an increasing number of adults with serious illnesses each year travel to Switzerland for assisted suicide, and a database of more than evidence that demonstrates the relationship between suicide and the terminal and chronic diseases we can not continue with our national policy to avoid this problem.