Suicide is an Urgent Public Health Problem in America

Screening tools can connect people to treatment and save lives

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Projects: Suicide Risk Reduction
Suicide is an Urgent Public Health Problem in America

If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or visit 988lifeline.org and click on the chat button.

More than 47,000 people die by suicide each year. Suicide was the 12th-leading cause of death in the country in 2020. From 1999 to 2019, the suicide rate increased 33% across all sexes, races, and ethnicities.
  1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System injury data, 2019, accessed Nov. 12, 2021, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html.
  2. S.L. Murphy et al., “Mortality in the United States, 2020” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm.
  3. Sally C. Curtin and Holly Hedegaard, “Suicide Rates for Females and Males by Race and Ethnicity: United States, 1999 and 2017,” last modified June 20, 2019, accessed 12/13/2021, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/suicide/rates_1999_2017.htm#Fig2.
  4. B.K. Ahmedani et al., “Health Care Contacts in the Year Before Suicide Death,” Joural of General Internal Medicine 29, no. 6 (2014), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4026491/.
  5. I.W. Miller et al., “Suicide Prevention in an Emergency Department Population: The ED-SAFE Study,” JAMA Psychiatry 74, no. 6 (2017): 563-70, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28456130/.
Data Visualization
Projects: Suicide Risk Reduction
Topics: Health Care & Behavioral Health
Tags: Mental health
Experts: Kristen Mizzi Angelone
Places: United States
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Kristen Mizzi Angelone Project Director
Suicide Risk Reduction
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Suicide Risk Screenings Can Save Lives

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The overall U.S. suicide rate grew 33% from 1999 to 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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