New report examines rates of suicide across six different levels of urbanization

Trends in Suicide by Level of Urbanization — United States, 1999–2015 | MMWR

Trends in Suicide by Level of Urbanization

New report examines rates of suicide across six different levels of urbanization

CDC released a new article in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Trends in Suicide by Level of Urbanization—United States, 1999-2015. This report describes the trends in suicide rates across counties by level of urbanization.

Key Findings

• The study highlights higher rates of suicide in areas with lower levels of urbanization (more rural areas).
• The study demonstrates a growing disparity between suicide rates in less urban and more urban areas of the United States.
• During 1999–2015, annual suicide rates increased across all levels of urbanization (large metro areas, medium metro areas, small metro areas and non-metro areas).
• Suicide rates at the beginning of the study were lowest for the more urban counties and highest for the less urban (more rural) counties, a gap that continued to widen over time.

Suicide continues to be a significant public health problem in the United States. The good news is that suicide is preventable and evidence-based strategies to prevent suicide in both less urban and more urban areas exist. CDC’s Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policies, Programs, and Practices, can help states and communities prioritize prevention efforts and address upward trends in suicide rates. The strategies in the technical package support the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention(NSSP) and the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s (AFSP) initiative, Project 2025, goal to reduce the annual rate of suicide by 20% by 2025.

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• New CDC MMWR article shows that suicide rates in the United States have been on the rise. Rates in less urban areas have been consistently higher than rates in more urban areas, a gap that has widened overtime. https://go.usa.gov/xX4dZ

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• U.S. suicide rates continue to rise w/ increasing gap between the most rural and the most urban areas. Learn more: https://go.usa.gov/xX4dZ

Learn More

• CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention
• CDC Suicide Prevention
• Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policy, Programs, and Practices
• National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention
• National Strategy for Suicide Prevention
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline