Domestic abuse and suicide By: Aneeta Prem, Founder, Freedom Charity 16 Feb 2026
Domestic abuse and suicide in the UK: the deaths we are still failing to record
This week, The Guardian reported that suicides linked to domestic abuse may be far higher than official systems recognise. Many deaths never enter the record as abuse-related at all. That matters. If the system cannot name these deaths, it cannot learn from them or prevent the next one.
Domestic abuse does not only kill through homicide. It can also kill by trapping someone in fear, isolation and hopelessness.
What the latest evidence shows
Police-led work already points to a serious pattern. The National Police Chiefs’ Council Domestic Homicide Project has recorded that suspected suicides following domestic abuse have, in recent years, outnumbered intimate partner homicides.
The Guardian investigation adds further weight. It draws on regional suicide surveillance and bereaved families’ accounts and argues that official figures capture only a fraction of the true scale. Where coercive control builds slowly, records often miss it. Where abuse is enforced by more than one person, records miss it even more.
So a person can die because of abuse, yet the system still files the death as a standalone mental health crisis, detached from what drove it.
Why the UK misses these deaths
Services treat suicide as an individual event
Too many systems start and end with “mental health”. They stop at diagnosis. They do not examine the pressure that someone lived under, the control they faced, or the warnings that appeared in plain sight. That approach strips away cause and effect.
People cannot always disclose safely
Abuse thrives on silence. Many victims fear escalation, disbelief, or the consequences for children and family. Coercive control also works by shrinking a person’s life in small steps. If agencies record only incidents, they miss the trajectory.
The state does not consistently review abuse-linked suicide
Domestic Homicide Reviews exist because the UK accepts that domestic abuse deaths require structured learning. Yet suicide following abuse still falls outside consistent review. Agencies, therefore, repeat the same mistakes, unseen and uncorrected.
Accountability often ends when the victim dies
Recent reporting shows how quickly some domestic abuse inquiries close after a suicide, even where an inquest recognises abuse as a contributing factor. Families are left without answers. Perpetrators often face little scrutiny. That silence becomes part of the harm.
Domestic abuse is not only about partners
Many people still treat domestic abuse as something that happens only between partners. That view is wrong.
Abuse can come from a husband or wife. It can also come from parents, siblings and extended family members. Control does not stop being abuse because a family enforces it together.
This is where we must accurately name dishonour-based abuse.
Dishonour-based abuse has nothing to do with “honour”. It is punishment, surveillance and fear. It often involves multiple perpetrators. It can include forced marriage risk, threats of expulsion or violence, and the removal of autonomy in the name of reputation and control. For those trapped inside it, the cost of resisting can feel unbearable.
When suicide follows this kind of coercion, records often mislabel the death as a family breakdown or mental illness. The abuse disappears at the very moment the state most needs to see it.
Aneeta Prem
“When someone dies by suicide after domestic abuse, people call it depression, as if it came from nowhere. But despair is built. It is built by fear, by control, by being watched, threatened and worn down until you cannot see a way out. And it is not only partners who do this. Sometimes it is your own family. That is dishonour-based abuse. There is nothing honourable about it. It is coercion, and it can be fatal.”
What must change now
Domestic abuse must become a clear line of inquiry when someone dies by suspected suicide. Where agencies hold a history of coercive control, they should examine it as a potential contributing factor, not treat it as background.
The UK also needs consistent safeguarding review when suicide follows domestic abuse. Reviews create learning. Learning changes practice. Without review, services repeat failure at scale.
Risk assessment must treat coercive control as dangerous in itself. Professionals must look beyond visible violence. Entrapment, isolation, humiliation and threats can destroy hope and agency.
Finally, suicide prevention and safeguarding frameworks must include dishonour-based abuse explicitly. Professionals need the language and confidence to identify family-enforced coercion early and act decisively.
Why this matters
If we fail to name abuse in life, we will fail to record it in death. If we fail to record it, we will fail to prevent it.
These deaths are not inevitable. Systems miss them. We can change that.
If you are worried about someone
If you are experiencing forced marriage risk, FGM or dishonour-based abuse, you can contact Freedom Charity for confidential support and safeguarding advice.
If someone is in immediate danger, call 999.