Domestic abuse links to suicide: Rapid review, fieldwork, and quantitative analysis report

The UK police received, on average, over 100 domestic abuse-related calls an hour in 2014/15, which represents 10% of all recorded crime (HMIC, 2015). To date, very little systematic data have been gathered on the relationship between domestic abuse and victim suicide in the UK. In one of the first projects of its kind, the police and government in England and Wales established the Domestic Homicides Project to collect, review, and share quick-time learning from all police-recorded domestic homicides and suspected suicides of individuals with a history of domestic abuse victimisation nationally. During Covid-19 and attendant restrictions, the Project commissioned the Vulnerability  Knowledge and Practice Programme, which published the report “Domestic Homicides and Suspected Victim Suicides During the Covid-19 Pandemic 2020-2021” (hereafter, the VKPP Report). Unexplained or  suspicious deaths, and suspected suicides of individuals with a known history of domestic abuse, were included in the VKPP Report definition to allow for capturing as wide a range of deaths following domestic abuse as possible.