US suicide rate fell in 2024 after hovering at high level

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. suicide rate dropped slightly last year from some of the highest levels ever reported, preliminary data suggests. Experts say it’s hard to know exactly why, or whether the decline will continue.

A little over 48,800 suicide deaths were reported in 2024, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 500 fewer than the year before.

The overall suicide rate fell to 13.7 per 100,000 people.

Suicides rose for nearly two decades aside from a two-year drop around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then they shot up again, to more than 14 per 100,000 from 2021 to 2023.

Experts caution that suicide — the nation’s 10th leading cause of death in 2024 — is complicated and that attempts can be driven by a range of factors. Contributors include higher rates of depression, limited availability of mental health services and the availability of guns. About 55% of all suicide deaths involve firearms, according to CDC data.

Rates vary across age groups and locations. For example the suicide rate for Americans in their late 20s and early 30s fell significantly in 2024, but it remained pretty stable for other age groups. And rates fell in some states in the South and Midwest but not in the Mountain West.

“There’s a lot to dig into as we’re starting to think about what could be responsible for a potential decline,” said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University public health professor who studies suicide.

That includes understanding “whether this is a blip on the radar” or the start of a prolonged decline, she added.

It has helped that some large health systems — including the one run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — have set up programs to screen or identify at-risk people, said Dr. Christine Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Another possible contributor is a 3-year-old national crisis line that allows anyone to dial 988 to reach a mental health specialist. It has a special option for military veterans, a group at higher risk for suicide.

But the Trump administration decided last summer to eliminate an option that connected callers with a counselor trained in supporting LGBTQ+ people under age 25 — another group at higher risk.

“I don’t think it’s a good sign that we’re eliminating programs that are designed to reach out to the highest-risk individuals,” Keyes said.

Suicides are often underreported, with some families seeing shame in having a loved one’s death listed as a suicide, said Alexandra Lord, a public health historian at the National Museum of American History, and that likely continues to be true to some extent.

But Moutier said there is less stigma than in the past and people are more willing to seek out help.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.