Suicide

Definitions

• Suicide is defined as death caused by self-directed injurious behavior with intent to die as a result of the behavior.
• A suicide attempt is a self-directed, potentially injurious behavior with intent to die as a result of the behavior. A suicide attempt might not result in death or injury.
• Suicidal ideation refers to thinking about, considering, or planning suicide.

Additional information about suicide can be found on the NIMH health topics page on Suicide Prevention.

Suicide is One of The Leading Causes of Death in the United States

• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WISQARS Leading Causes of Death Reports , in 2022:
  • Suicide was the eleventh leading cause of death overall in the United States, claiming the lives of over 49,400 people.
  • Suicide was the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10-14 and 25-34, the third leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 15-24, and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 35 and 44.
  • There were nearly two times as many suicides (49,476) in the United States as there were homicides (24,849).

Table 1 shows the eleven leading causes of death in the United States, and the number of deaths attributed to each cause. Data are shown for all ages and select age groups where suicide was one of the leading eleven causes of death in 2022. The data are based on death certificate information compiled by the CDC.

Table 1

Suicide Rates

Trends over Time

• Suicide rates are based on the number of people who have died by suicide per 100,000 population. The use of ‘age-adjusted’ rates allows for comparison of differences in population age distributions and changes in population size over time, including from one year to another year.
• Figure 1 shows age-adjusted suicide rates in the United States for each year from 2000 through 2022  for the total population, and for males and females separately.
  • The total age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased 35.2% from 10.4 per 100,000 in 2000 to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2018, before declining to 13.9 per 100,000 in 2019 and declining again to 13.5 per 100,000 in 2020. The total age-adjusted suicide rate in the United States increased to 14.0 per 100,000 in 2021 and then increased again to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2022.
  • In 2022, the suicide rate among males was 4 times higher (22.9 per 100,000) than among females (5.9 per 100,000).

Figure 1

Suicide by Method

Data in Table 2 and Figure 5 are courtesy of the CDC WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports .

Number of Suicide Deaths by Method

• Table 2 includes information on the total number of suicide deaths for the most common methods.
• In 2022, firearms were the most common method used in suicide deaths in the United States, accounting for over half of all suicide deaths (27,032).

Table 2

Suicide Thoughts and Behaviors Among U.S. Adults

Data in Figure 6, Figure 7, and Figure 8 are based on data from the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health  (NSDUH)¹ by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration  (SAMHSA).

Data Sources

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS). Atlanta, GA: National Centers for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html .

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2024). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. PEP23-07-01-006, NSDUH Series H-58). Rockville, MD: Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved from https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2023-nsduh-annual-national-report .

Statistical Methods and Measurement Caveats

National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH)

Population:

• NSDUH participants are representative of the civilian, non-institutionalized population age 12 years old or older residing within the United States.
• The survey covers residents of households (persons living in houses/townhouses, apartments, condominiums; civilians living in housing on military bases, etc.) and persons in non-institutional group quarters (for example: shelters, rooming/boarding houses, college dormitories, migratory workers' camps, and halfway houses).
• The survey does not cover persons who, for the entire year, had no fixed address (for example: persons experiencing homelessness and/or transient persons not in shelters); were on active military duty; or who resided in institutional group quarters (for example: correctional facilities and hospitals ). The survey also does not include persons who are unable to complete the survey in either English or Spanish or persons who are not physically or mentally capable of completing the interview.
• A new self-administered demographics section is included at the beginning of the questionnaire, including new questions about respondents’ gender identity. Questions about sex, Hispanic origin, and race (that are used to create estimates for reports and tables) were moved to this new section, and the question about respondents’ sex was revised to ask about sex assigned at birth instead of asking whether respondents were male or female.

Interview Response and Completion:

• In 2023, 49.1% of the selected NSDUH sample of people 18 or older did not complete the interview. This rate of non-response is lower than in 2021 and 2022, but higher than in years 2020 and earlier. Please see the Background on the 2023 NSDUH and the COVID-19 Pandemic section below for more information.
• Reasons for non-response to interviewing include the following: refusal to participate (26.1%); respondent unavailable, never at home, or did not respond to the web survey (18.3%); and other reasons such as partially completed but unusable interviews, physically/mentally incapable or language barriers (4.7%).
• People with suicide behavior may disproportionately fall into these non-response categories. While NSDUH weighting includes non-response adjustments to reduce bias, these adjustments may not fully account for differential non-response by suicide behavior status. Prior to the 2020 NSDUH, this bias was deemed small and inconsequential due to low rates of item nonresponse and low prevalence estimates for outcomes imputed using the zero-fill method. With the increase in break-offs among adults in 2020 who completed the questionnaire via the web, the potential bias of this approach for handling missing data became of greater concern. Therefore, missing values in the variables associated with multiple outcomes, including for suicide thoughts and behaviors, were statistically imputed beginning in 2021.

Data Suppression:

• For some groups, data are not reported due to low precision. Data may be suppressed in the above charts if the data do not meet acceptable ranges for prevalence estimates, standard error estimates, and sample size.

Background on the 2023 NSDUH and the COVID-19 Pandemic:

• Data collection methods for the 2023 NSDUH changed in several ways because of the COVID-19 pandemic: the 2023 NSDUH continued the use of multimode data collection procedures (both in-person and virtual data collection) that were first implemented in the fourth quarter of the 2020 NSDUH. Overall, 36.1% of interviews were completed via the web, and 63.9% were completed in person. For comparison, more than half of interviews in 2021 (54.6%) were completed via the web, and more than half of interviews in 2022 (57.6%) were completed in person. In 2023, the weighted response rates for household screening and for interviewing were 24.4% and 50.5%, respectively, for an overall response rate of 12.3% for people age 12 or older. Given the use of multimode data collection procedures through the entirety of the collection year and the rate of non-response, comparison of estimates from the 2023 NSDUH with those from prior years must be made with caution.

Please see the 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health Methodological Summary and Definitions report  for further information on how these data were collected and calculated.

Last Updated: February 2025

If You are in Crisis

If you are in crisis, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline  at 988, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Lifeline provides confidential support to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Support is also available via live chat . Para ayuda en español, llame al 988. 

Additional Resources

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 
• Veterans Crisis Line 
• National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention 
• National Library of Medicine - Suicide 
• National Strategy for Suicide Prevention 
• NIMH Multimedia on Suicide Prevention
• NIMH Suicide Prevention
• StopBullying.gov