The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary classifies each Prevention of Future Deaths report (PFDs) into one or several categories, with 16 pre-defined categories. This research has been published in the Medico-Legal Journal (Zhang & Richards, 2023).

There was a significant increase in the deaths related to various categories in 2021, despite the number of PFDs written in 2021 was lower than 2019. In particular, PFDs in the “alcohol, drug and medication”, “mental health”, “suicide”, “police”, “care homes”, and “product-related” deaths all increased in 2021 compared to other years.

Out of the 16 categories, 12 were introduced from inception (July 2013). These categories are presented in Figure 3.

There are four categories introduced after 2013: suicide (2015 onwards), child deaths (2015 onwards), emergency service-related deaths (2019 onwards) and Wales prevention of future deaths reports (2019 onwards). Figure 4 presents the number of PFDs in these four categories.

Mental Health
There has been a significant increase in the number of mental health-related deaths, including suicides.

Table 1: Number of PFDs by death category, containing the subtotals by category and by year.
Year | hospital | community health care emergency services | other | road | state custody | suicide | wales prevention of future report | mental health | emergency services | alcohol, drug and medication | police | accident at work and health and safety | child | care home | product | railway |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2013 | 64 | 29 | 17 | 16 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 15 | 4 | 2 |
2014 | 245 | 68 | 69 | 59 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 15 | 8 | 5 | 0 | 28 | 13 | 5 |
2015 | 223 | 48 | 56 | 40 | 31 | 15 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 10 | 7 | 8 | 36 | 25 | 10 | 5 |
2016 | 229 | 63 | 49 | 40 | 33 | 46 | 0 | 28 | 0 | 10 | 13 | 9 | 35 | 26 | 9 | 7 |
2017 | 239 | 63 | 35 | 41 | 24 | 20 | 0 | 17 | 0 | 4 | 9 | 8 | 24 | 29 | 11 | 11 |
2018 | 177 | 51 | 44 | 35 | 22 | 34 | 0 | 35 | 0 | 22 | 5 | 9 | 21 | 32 | 3 | 8 |
2019 | 217 | 41 | 46 | 51 | 37 | 55 | 28 | 64 | 44 | 52 | 12 | 7 | 38 | 33 | 5 | 10 |
2020 | 99 | 63 | 65 | 25 | 13 | 55 | 12 | 62 | 22 | 45 | 10 | 5 | 27 | 25 | 9 | 7 |
2021 | 201 | 83 | 105 | 27 | 29 | 90 | 18 | 115 | 21 | 66 | 34 | 5 | 40 | 43 | 28 | 11 |
2022 | 78 | 13 | 39 | 8 | 7 | 30 | 10 | 51 | 12 | 30 | 7 | 2 | 18 | 14 | 5 | 6 |
Category totals | 1772 | 522 | 525 | 342 | 238 | 345 | 68 | 413 | 99 | 260 | 107 | 60 | 239 | 270 | 97 | 72 |