Changes in Suicide Rates — United States, 2018–2019

Abstract

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States overall, and the second and fourth leading cause among persons aged 10-34 and 35-44 years, respectively (1).In just over 2 decades , approximately 800,000 deaths were attributed to suicide, with a 33% increase in the suicide rate over the period (1).In 2019, a total of 12 million adults reported serious thoughts of suicide during the past year, 3.5 million planned a suicide, and 1.4 million attempted suicide (2).Suicides and suicide attempts in 2019 led to a lifetime combined medical and work-loss cost (i.e., the costs that accrue from the time of the injury through the course of a person's expected lifetime) of approximately $70 billion (https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/costT/).From 2018 to 2019, the overall suicide rate declined for the first time in over a decade (1).To understand how the decline varied among different subpopulations by demographic and other characteristics, CDC analyzed changes in counts and age-adjusted suicide rates from 2018 to 2019 by demographic characteristics, county urbanicity, mechanism of injury, and state.Z-tests and 95% confidence intervals were used to assess statistical significance.Suicide rates declined by 2.1% overall, by 3.2% among females, and by 1.8% among males.Significant declines occurred, overall, in five states.Other significant declines were noted among subgroups defined by race/ethnicity, age, urbanicity, and suicide mechanism.These declines, although encouraging, were not uniform, and several states experienced significant rate increases.A comprehensive approach to prevention that uses data to drive decision-making, implements prevention strategies from CDC's Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policy, Programs, and Practices with the best available evidence, and targets the multiple risk factors associated with suicide, especially in populations disproportionately affected, is needed to build on initial progress from 2018 to 2019 (3).Data from the 2018-2019 National Vital Statistics System multiple cause-of-death mortality files were analyzed.Suicide deaths were identified by using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision underlying cause-of-death codes U03, X60-X84, and Y87.0.Two-digit age-adjusted death rates (per 100,000 population) and confidence intervals were calculated by using the direct method and the 2000 U.S. standard population, rounded to one digit.Data for persons aged <10 years are not shown in results by age group because determining suicidal intent in younger children is difficult and case counts were <20, indicating unstable rates (4).Urbanization level of the decedent's county of residence was categorized by using the 2013 National Center for Health Statistics Urban-Rural INSIDE 269 Estimated Medicaid Costs Associated with Hepatitis A During an Outbreak -West Virginia, 2018-2019 273 Suspected Recurrent SARS-CoV-2 Infections Among Residents of a Skilled Nursing Facility During a Second COVID-19 Outbreak -Kentucky, July-November 2020 278 First Identified Cases of SARS-CoV-2 Variant B.1.1.7 in Minnesota -December 2020-January 2021 280 Detection of B.1.351SARS-CoV-2 Variant Strain -Zambia, December 2020 283 First Month of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Monitoring -United States, December 14, 2020-January 13, 2021 289 Clusters of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Elementary School Educators and Students in One School District -Georgia, December 2020-January 2021 295 QuickStats Continuing Education examination available at https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/mmwr_continuingEducation.html

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 127 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.