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Review
. 2022 Apr 5:43:99-116.
doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-051920-123206. Epub 2021 Oct 27.

The Recent Rise of Suicide Mortality in the United States

Gonzalo Martínez-Alés  1   2   3 , Tammy Jiang  4 , Katherine M Keyes  1 , Jaimie L Gradus  4   5
Affiliations
Review

The Recent Rise of Suicide Mortality in the United States

Gonzalo Martínez-Alés et al. Annu Rev Public Health. .

Abstract

Suicide is a major public health concern in the United States. Between 2000 and 2018, US suicide rates increased by 35%, contributing to the stagnation and subsequent decrease in US life expectancy. During 2019, suicide declined modestly, mostly owing to slight reductions in suicides among Whites. Suicide rates, however, continued to increase or remained stable among all other racial/ethnic groups, and little is known about recent suicide trends among other vulnerable groups. This article (a) summarizes US suicide mortality trends over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, (b) reviews potential group-level causes of increased suicide risk among subpopulations characterized by markers of vulnerability to suicide, and (c) advocates for combining recent advances in population-based suicide prevention with a socially conscious perspective that captures the social, economic, and political contexts in which suicide risk unfolds over the life course of vulnerable individuals.

Keywords: self-injurious behavior; suicide; suicide rates; trends.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
US suicide mortality trends between 1900 and 2019, age-adjusted to the 2000 US population.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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