Male suicides spiked more dramatically last year than at any point since records began, amid concern deaths were being wrongly recorded due to a high standard of proof.

The male suicide rate rose in the UK for the first time since 2013 after 4,903 men killed themselves in 2018 at a rate of 17.2 per 100,000 of the population, according to the Office for National Statistics.

It marks an increase of 521 suicides on 2017 - the sharpest year-on-year change in deaths since modern records began in 1981, and the biggest change in the suicide rate since 1998.

The dramatic jump is partly explained by a change in the threshold of proof which a coroner or inquest jury is required to reach to record suicide while investigating an unnatural death.

In July 2018, the High Court ruled that evidence only needed to point towards suicide “on the balance of probabilities” rather than the previous criminal benchmark of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

It was a move - upheld by the Court of Appeal this year - that signalled an expected rise in the recorded number of suicides, as for years the term was entrenched with stigma and fiercely resisted as a conclusion by some families and religious communities.