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. 2025 Aug;60(8):1835-1845.
doi: 10.1007/s00127-025-02902-7. Epub 2025 Apr 17.

Suicide deaths among reproductive-aged women in the US post-Dobbs: a national time-series analysis

Parvati Singh  1 , Alaxandria Crawford  2 , Sarah Crow  2 , Jonathan R Powell  2   3 , Maria F Gallo  4
Affiliations

Suicide deaths among reproductive-aged women in the US post-Dobbs: a national time-series analysis

Parvati Singh et al. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

Purpose: The United States Supreme Court's Dobbs decision in June 2022 may have worsened mental health among reproductive-aged women nationally. We examined whether the Dobbs decision preceded an increase in suicides among reproductive-aged women using national, monthly data, from January 2018-December 2023.

Methods: We retrieved national monthly suicide counts from January 2018 to December 2023 for women and men 15-49 years of age (overall and stratified by two age groups- 15-24 years, 25-49 years) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research Multiple Cause of Death database. We used time series analyses to examine whether residuals of nationally aggregated counts of monthly suicides among women 15-49, 15-24- and 25-49-years of age (outcomes) exhibited higher-than-expected values following the Dobbs decision, controlling for autocorrelation and concomitant monthly series of suicides among men.

Results: We observed higher-than-expected residuals of suicides in July and September 2022 among 15-49-year-old women, and in September, October, December 2022 and March 2023 among 15-24-year-old women. No residual outliers were observed among 25-49-year-old women post-Dobbs. Results from time-series analyses indicate an average of 52.5 additional suicides in outlier months among 15-49-year-old women post-Dobbs (95% confidence interval [CI]: 14.85, 90.15). The increase appeared pronounced among younger age (15-24 years) women (coefficient = 19.6, 95% CI: 11.17, 28.03). Results suggest 104 additional suicides among 15-49-year-old women, and 78 excess suicides among 15-24-year-old women, nationally, post-Dobbs.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the adverse impact of the Dobbs ruling on mental health among reproductive-aged women.

Keywords: Dobbs; Abortion restriction; Suicides; Time-series analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflict of interest: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethical approval: This study used de-identified, aggregated, publicly available data and was deemed exempt from IRB review.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Monthly trends in suicides (count) among women (red) and men (gray) 15–49 years of age, United States, 2018–2023
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Time-series graph of ARIMA-derived expected (predicted) values of suicides among women 15–49 years of age, United States, January 2018 to December 2023
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Time-series graph of ARIMA-derived residuals of suicides among women 15–49 years of age and pre-Dobbs 95% confidence (prediction) interval of residuals (applied to full series), United States, January 2018 to December 2023. Residual outliers post-Dobbs (June 2022) are circled in red
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Time-series graph of ARIMA-derived residuals of suicides among women 15–24 years of age and pre-Dobbs 95% confidence (prediction) intervals of residuals (applied to full series), United States, January 2018 to December 2023. Residual outliers post-Dobbs (June 2022) are circled in red
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