Covid-19 and suicide: lessons from the Blitz

As a psychiatrist old enough to have experienced the Blitz as well as COVID-19, I noticed an omission in Edgar Jones’ impressively researched paper comparing public and governmental responses to the two events.¹ During my psychiatric training in the UK, I remember being told that 100 000 emergency psychiatric beds were planned in 1939 for the expected mass psychiatric casualties of bombing, not one of which was ever used, thus resembling the barely occupied Nightingale COVID hospital. It will be interesting to see whether the suicide rate actually fell during the first COVID-19 wave, as generally happens during wars on both the winning and losing sides, at least until hostilities cease.² My guess is that it did fall, or did not increase, in people under 30 years and over 60 years, but might have risen in the intermediate age group. However, forecasting suicidal behaviour is an imperfect art,3, 4 and nobody predicted that after 1982, suicide rates for men and women in Britain would, unprecedentedly, no longer move in parallel. For the first time, deaths by suicide among women fell consistently while the incidence among men rose.⁵