About us

The Suicide Mortality Review Committee (SuMRC) is an independent committee that reviews and advises the Health Quality & Safety Commission on how to reduce the number of suicide deaths in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Committee membership reflects the following suicide knowledge and expertise:

• suicide postvention approaches
• provision of Māori and Pacific peoples, and national service planning and delivery
• operational policy in the social sector
• suicide issues relating specifically to Māori whānau and Pacific peoples
• social science and health research
• lived experience
• mortality review systems
• risk assessment
• clinical expertise.

Find out more about the Committee members.

The committee is advised by a secretariat within the Health Quality & Safety Commission and also benefits from the guidance of advisors from the coronial service and the Ministry of Health.

Contact us at info@hqsc.govt.nz if you would like more information about the SUMRC.

Purpose

Aotearoa New Zealand has a high suicide rate – each week, on average, more than 10 people die by suicide. Suicide is devastating for all those personally affected and is a tragedy for society as a whole. The SuMRC acknowledges the grief of the families, whānau and friends whose loss has contributed to the statistics.

The SuMRC believes suicide is preventable and intends to use the learnings from these deaths to help prevent further deaths by suicide.

The SuMRC, along with four other mortality review committees, operates under the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. This allows it to obtain data from any agency and examine a wider range of material than might otherwise be available.

This data enables the SuMRC to carry out effective reviews of death by suicide including:

• building a comprehensive history of the lives of individuals who die by suicide (no identifiable data is published)
• reporting on patterns across cases
• providing advice and recommendations to prevent further deaths.

From reviewing the lives of those who die by suicide, the SuMRC will develop an in-depth understanding of suicide and guide new prevention and intervention activities. It will also improve existing activities, policies and practices.

Background

The Suicide Mortality Review Committee (SuMRC) was initially established as a trial in late 2013. The trial produced two reports: a cost-benefit analysis of investment in ongoing suicide mortality review as a tool for reducing suicide rates, and a report reviewing the suicides of three groups with particularly high death rates. These groups were rangatahi Māori (Māori youth) aged 15–24, men aged 25–64 and people who had accessed mental health services in the year before their death.

After identifying that there were clear opportunities across the health, justice, and social sectors for intervention, the SuMRC has now been established as a permanent mortality review committee.