Background: There is concern about the impact of COVID-19, and the control measures to prevent the spread, on children's mental health. The aim of this work was to identify if there had been a rise of childhood suicide during the COVID pandemic; using data from England's National Child Mortality Database (NCMD). Method: Child suicide rates between April to December 2020 were compared with those in 2019 using negative binomial regression models, and characteristics compared. In a subset (1st January to 17th May 2020) further characteristics and possible contributing factors were obtained. Results: A total of 193 likely childhood deaths by suicide were reported. There was no evidence overall suicide deaths were higher in 2020 than 2019 (RR 1.09 (0.80-1.48), p=0.584) but weak evidence that the rate in the first lockdown period (April to May 2020) was higher than the corresponding period in 2019 (RR 1.56 (0.86-2.81), p=0.144). Characteristics of individuals were similar between periods. Restriction to education and other activities, disruption to care and support services, tensions at home and isolation appeared to be contributing factors. Limitations: As child suicides are fortunately rare, the analysis is based on small numbers of deaths with limited statistical power to detect anything but major increases in incidence. Conclusion: We found no consistent evidence that child suicide deaths increased during the COVID-19 pandemic although there was a concerning signal they may have increased during the first UK lockdown. A similar peak was not seen during the following months, or the second lockdown.

中文翻译：

---

英格兰 COVID-19 大流行期间的儿童自杀率

背景：人们担心 COVID-19 的影响以及防止传播的控制措施对儿童心理健康的影响。这项工作的目的是确定在 COVID 大流行期间儿童自杀是否有所增加；使用来自英格兰国家儿童死亡率数据库 (NCMD) 的数据。方法：采用负二项回归模型将2020年4月至12月的儿童自杀率与2019年的儿童自杀率进行比较，并比较特征。在一个子集（2020 年 1 月 1 日至 5 月 17 日）中，获得了进一步的特征和可能的影响因素。结果：总共报告了 193 名可能死于自杀的儿童期。没有证据表明 2020 年的总体自杀死亡人数高于 2019 年（RR 1.09 (0.80-1.48)，p=0。584）但微弱的证据表明第一个锁定期（2020 年 4 月至 5 月）的比率高于 2019 年同期（RR 1.56 (0.86-2.81)，p=0.144）。不同时期的个体特征相似。教育和其他活动的限制、护理和支持服务的中断、家庭的紧张局势和孤立似乎是促成因素。局限性：幸运的是，儿童自杀很少见，因此该分析基于少数死亡人数，统计能力有限，无法检测到除发病率大幅增加之外的任何情况。结论：我们没有发现一致的证据表明在 COVID-19 大流行期间儿童自杀死亡人数增加，尽管有一个令人担忧的信号，他们可能在英国第一次封锁期间有所增加。在接下来的几个月或第二次封锁期间，没有看到类似的峰值。