The suicide rate dipped slightly from 2023 to 2024 but has not changed significantly since 2017, according to new data released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the C.D.C., the suicide rate fell from 14.1 deaths per 100,000 people in 2023 to 13.7 deaths per 100,000 people in 2024. Previously, the rate was 13 in 2014, then hovered around 14 from 2017 onward.
“What stands out is that the suicide rate remains stubbornly high,” said Dr. Maria A. Oquendo, a professor and chair of psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the past 100 years, the suicide rate appears virtually unchanged, though it has fluctuated throughout the years and also varies by region. In 2024, for example, the suicide rate was 5.7 in the District of Columbia versus 29.7 in Alaska.
The 2024 data, the latest available, suggests that more efforts are needed to identify those at risk and to improve access to evidence-based interventions, while also working to develop better detection methods and treatments, Dr. Oquendo said.
In 2024, suicide rose to become the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, according to the C.D.C., up from a ranking of 11th in 2023. But suicide appears in the top 10 causes of death only among certain racial or ethnic groups, namely those who identify as either Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, Hispanic or white.
Despite the overall rise in ranking, the total number of suicides actually fell between 2023 and 2024. There were 48,824 deaths by suicide in 2024 compared to 49,316 in 2023, a decrease of 1 percent.
Although it’s difficult to pinpoint the reason for the decrease, multiple factors may have contributed to the lower number, including the Zero Suicide model that aims to improve suicide care in hospitals and behavioral health systems, advances in school-based interventions and the 988 national suicide prevention hotline.
One study published in April compared suicide deaths from July 2022 to December 2024 and found that in the two and a half years following the 2022 rollout of the 988 hotline, the rate of suicides among young people in the United States dropped 11 percent below projections, decreasing most sharply in states with a higher volume of answered 988 calls.
And new survey data from 2025 indicates that teenagers surveyed at high schools across the country are experiencing improvements in several key measures, including persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, serious thoughts of suicide and attempting suicide in the last year.
But 33 percent of the high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the last 12 months. Fourteen percent reported that they had seriously considered attempting suicide.
“I always think we have to be doing more,” said Holly Wilcox, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Suicide Prevention. “I want to get to the point where we have the sustained reduction.”
Many of those who die by suicide will not see a mental health professional: Men are less likely to do so than women. And both men and women use guns to die by suicide more often than any other method. The states that showed the highest suicide rates in the C.D.C. data were also, in many cases, the states with the least restrictive gun laws, Dr. Wilcox said.
“We need to take a public health approach,” she added.
The 2024 data from the C.D.C. showed some encouraging trends. Between 2023 and 2024, suicide rates decreased for women age 25 and older in each age group. And between 2023 and 2024, suicide rates decreased for males ages 15 to 24 and 25 to 44. Overall, the suicide rate for males was about three to four times higher than the rate for females from 2014 to 2024.
Dying by suicide remains among the top causes of death in younger people, in part because they tend to be healthier than older people, Dr. Oquendo said, and are less likely to die from illnesses like cancer or heart disease. In 2024, just as in the year before, suicide was the second leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24 and those ages 25 to 44.
Dr. Kevin Simon, a pediatric psychiatrist at Boston Children’s Hospital, said his 24-year-old nephew died by suicide in February. While any improvements in the suicide rate are encouraging, it’s just one factor, he added.
When he looks at the last text messages he exchanged with his nephew, he wonders what more, if anything, he could have done. He wonders the same, oftentimes, about some of his own patients who have also died by suicide.
“Each data point, unfortunately, is a person,” he said.
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