Campaigners for women’s rights in the UK are calling for more mental health support for domestic abuse victims after police recorded 93 suspected abuse-related suicides in a year.
A report found 242 domestic abuse-related deaths were recorded between April 2022 and March 2023, of which 93 were suspected suicides, 80 were intimate partner homicides, 31 were adult family homicides, 23 were unexpected deaths, 11 were child deaths, and four others were deaths involving individuals living together who were not family members or intimate partners.
Dr Katie Hoeger and Dr Lis Bates, the lead academic authors of the report, said: “Our report lays bare the scale of deaths following domestic abuse, with at least one victim suicide every four days and murder by a partner or family member every three days. This demands urgent collective action and not only from police – these victims and perpetrators are known to many other agencies.
“There remains a lack of consistency across forces about when and how information is sought and shared about domestic abuse history when there is an unexpected death. Policing can also build on successful cases to prosecute more perpetrators for domestic abuse after victim suicides.”
Deaths have fallen from 259 in 2021-22 but are higher than in the project’s first year, 2020-21, when 222 were recorded.
The number of suspected victim suicides after domestic abuse has overtaken intimate partner homicides for the first time in the three-year study. This may in part be due to improved recording of information, though the report notes that an overall increase cannot be ruled out. Numbers of recorded suicides have risen year on year, from 51 in year one to 72 in year two and 93 in year three.
The domestic abuse commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, said: “That these devastating deaths are better identified is encouraging, but government must build on this, equipping the police and forensic investigators to take an investigative approach and properly hold perpetrators to account for their role in suicides.”
She added: “This is a public health issue. Mental health services must be equipped to recognise and respond to domestic abuse through trained and sensitive routine inquiry and strong connections with local domestic abuse services. I surveyed 4,000 victims and survivors of domestic abuse and found that counselling and other therapeutic support was the number one service victims said they wanted.
“But specialist domestic abuse services are hanging by a thread and risk disappearing as the local authority funding crisis spirals out of control. The victims and prisoners bill currently going through the House of Lords is a golden opportunity to change this. I want to see an amendment in the bill to place a duty on the government to provide funding so that all local areas can invest in the domestic abuse services victims need.”
Farah Nazeer, the chief executive of Women’s Aid, said the report made for sombre reading given that the number of domestic homicides had remained consistent over the years.
She said: “We know from working with survivors that almost half of those in refuge have experienced depression or suicidal thoughts as a direct result of their experience … We need urgent action to ensure the mental health impacts of domestic abuse are fully recognised and women can access the life-saving support they need.”
Nazeer called on the government to ensure that specialist domestic abuse services received sustainable funding to remove the “postcode lottery” for survivors, which she said meant too many people were “turned away at a point of need or crisis”.
The report shows that the majority of victims were women aged 25 to 54, while most perpetrators were male and in the same age bracket. Victims and perpetrators of minority ethnic heritage were slightly overrepresented.
Nazeer noted that “failures by the public services, including racism, disbelieving women and poor understanding of violence against women and girls” were contributing factors.
Four out of five perpetrators were known to police before a homicide occurred – three out of five in the case of domestic abuse – and more than a third were known to other agencies, the report found. About 10% of suspects were or had been managed by the police or probation service. Key indicators of risk included controlling and coercive behaviour, mental ill health, alcohol use, drug use, and separation or the ending of a relationship.
The annual report examines all deaths identified by police as domestic abuse-related and is the third produced by the national Domestic Homicide Project, a Home Office-funded research project led by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Academics, including staff from the University of Central Lancashire, led the research.
The report recognises that the police have responded to recommendations made in previous years, including better training relating to coercive control, and encouraging officers to investigate unexpected deaths. Guidance on suicide has been updated and forces are working with other agencies around prevention.
But it suggests that police need to improve their approach to suspected suicides, including by recognising the high risk posed by coercive and controlling behaviour; speaking to family and friends to establish any history of domestic abuse; investigating unexpected deaths; and prosecuting perpetrators for domestic abuse after a victim’s suicide.
The minister for victims and safeguarding, Laura Farris, said the government had made “significant progress addressing fatal domestic abuse”, including through the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, while domestic abuse-related suicide remained a focus.
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
