If you’re thinking about suicide right now, or you’re worried about someone who is, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. It’s free, it’s confidential, and someone is there 24 hours a day. Text and chat are available in Spanish, and there are options for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
Every September one national number gets passed around, and it tells you almost nothing about who is at risk or where. So we went to the agencies that count these things, the CDC, NIMH, SAMHSA and the Texas Department of State Health Services, and put their latest figures for the United States and for Texas in one place: by sex, by age, by race and ethnicity, and by who gets treatment.
The short answers
- 48,824 people died by suicide in the United States in 2024. The rate was 14.4 per 100,000, and suicide was the tenth leading cause of death.
- Men die by suicide at about four times the rate of women. In 2023 the rates were 22.8 per 100,000 for men and 5.9 for women.
- The highest suicide rate of any age and sex group belongs to men aged 75 and older, at 40.7 per 100,000 in 2023.
- American Indian and Alaska Native people have the highest suicide rate of any racial or ethnic group, for both women and men.
- In 2024, 14.3 million American adults had serious thoughts of suicide, 4.6 million made a plan, and 2.2 million attempted.
- 16,262 Texans died by suicide between 2019 and 2022, and Texas’s rate ran a little below the national rate in each of those years. Texas adults are about as likely as other Americans to report suicidal thoughts, and less likely to receive any mental health treatment.
How many people die by suicide in the United States each year?
In 2024, the most recent full year the CDC has published, 48,824 people died by suicide in the United States. The age-adjusted rate was 14.4 deaths per 100,000 people, and suicide was the tenth leading cause of death in the country. Spread across a year, that comes to about one death every eleven minutes.
The 2023 total was 49,316, so 2024 came in about 500 lower. One year’s change is not a trend, and the change from 2022 to 2023 was not statistically significant either. What the data supports is that the national rate has stopped rising. Whether it’s now falling will take more than one year to tell.
Most of the detailed breakdowns below are for 2023, because that’s the most recent year the CDC has published in full by sex, age, race and ethnicity. Where 2024 figures exist, they’re included alongside.
Do men or women have higher suicide rates?
Men, by a wide margin. In 2023 the suicide rate was 22.8 per 100,000 for men and 5.9 for women, roughly four to one. The CDC’s 2024 page reports the same ratio, “nearly four times higher”, with its chart putting the 2024 rates at 22.2 for males and 5.6 for females.
Which age group has the highest suicide rate?
Men aged 75 and older, at 40.7 per 100,000 in 2023. The full breakdown by age and sex, per 100,000 people:
| Age group | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| 10 to 14 | 2.1 | 2.5 |
| 15 to 24 | 5.5 | 21.2 |
| 25 to 44 | 7.7 | 29.8 |
| 45 to 64 | 8.6 | 29.2 |
| 65 to 74 | 6.2 | 26.5 |
| 75 and older | 5.1 | 40.7 |
Source: NIMH, from CDC WISQARS, 2023.
The rate for men aged 75 and older is close to double the rate for men aged 15 to 24. For women, the peak is in midlife, ages 45 to 64, at 8.6. The CDC’s 2024 data, which uses different age bands, reports that people aged 80 and older had the highest rates.
Between 2022 and 2023, only two age and sex groups changed by a statistically significant amount: women aged 75 and older rose 10.9 percent, from 4.6 to 5.1, and men aged 75 and older fell 7.3 percent, from 43.9 to 40.7. No other age and sex group moved by a significant amount.
Which racial and ethnic groups have the highest suicide rates?
American Indian and Alaska Native people, for both sexes. Rates by race, ethnicity and sex, per 100,000 people, 2023:
| Group | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| American Indian and Alaska Native | 12.4 | 35.3 |
| White | 7.4 | 28.0 |
| Black | 3.5 | 15.1 |
| Asian and Pacific Islander | 3.7 | 10.3 |
| Hispanic (any race) | 3.0 | 13.3 |
Source: NIMH, from CDC WISQARS, 2023. Hispanic people are counted across all races; every other row is non-Hispanic.
The gap is large. The rate for American Indian and Alaska Native women, 12.4, is higher than the rate for Black, Asian or Hispanic men. The CDC’s 2024 figures show the same ordering at the top, with the highest rates among non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native people and non-Hispanic White people.
How many Americans have suicidal thoughts, make a plan, or attempt suicide?
In 2024, according to the CDC’s summary of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 14.3 million adults had serious thoughts of suicide, 4.6 million made a suicide plan, and 2.2 million made an attempt. That’s 5.5 percent of adults with serious thoughts in a single year.
Young adults carry a higher share. Among adults aged 18 to 25, 12.6 percent had serious thoughts of suicide, more than double the all-adult figure. Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, the 2024 survey counted 2.6 million with serious thoughts, about 10.1 percent, and 700,000 who attempted.
One trend in that survey is easy to miss. Between 2021 and 2024, the share of adults who made a suicide plan rose from 1.4 percent to 1.8 percent, while the shares with serious thoughts and with attempts stayed flat.
High school students are surveyed separately, with a different question. The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report found that in 2023, 20 percent of high school students seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, 16 percent made a plan, and 9 percent attempted. Those figures and the household survey figures above are not comparable with each other.
What is the suicide rate in Texas?
Texas’s suicide rate has been a little below the national rate in every recent year. The state’s own detail comes from the Texas Violent Death Reporting System, run by the Department of State Health Services, whose most recent brief covers 2019 through 2022.
Across those four years, 16,262 Texans died by suicide, more than 4,000 a year. The Texas rate against the national rate, per 100,000: 13.54 against 14.47 in 2019, 13.11 against 13.95 in 2020, 14.19 against 14.52 in 2021, and 14.39 against 14.84 in 2022. For 2023, America’s Health Rankings puts the Texas rate at 14.4 against a national 14.7, drawing on CDC WONDER.
In 2022 Texas had the second-highest number of violent deaths of any state, and across 2019 to 2022 suicides made up three of every five violent deaths the state reported.
The Texas breakdowns for 2019 to 2022, from the same brief:
- Sex. Men were 80 percent of Texas suicide deaths and women 20 percent, in line with the national split.
- Race and ethnicity. White non-Hispanic Texans were 65 percent of deaths, Hispanic Texans 24 percent, and Black non-Hispanic Texans 8 percent. These figures are the share of all deaths, not rates, so a group’s share depends on its population size as well as its risk.
- Age. The largest number of deaths was among Texans aged 25 to 34, with 3,176 across the four years, then 35 to 44 with 2,835, then 65 and older with 2,605. The highest rate, as opposed to the highest count, was in the 20 to 24 age group.
- Veterans. 2,274 of the deaths, 14 percent, were Texans who had served in the military.
- Marital status. 6,528 had never married, 5,532 were married, and 3,003 were divorced.
The brief’s detailed circumstance data covers 22 counties, about 70 percent of Texas violent deaths, so the context behind the deaths is less complete than the counts themselves.
How does Texas compare on suicidal thoughts and mental health treatment?
On thoughts, plans and attempts, Texas is close to the national figures. On receiving treatment, it’s behind. SAMHSA’s state estimates for 2023 and 2024 combined, next to the national figures from the same tables:
| Measure | Texas | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Adults with serious thoughts of suicide | 5.17% | 5.22% |
| Ages 12 to 17 with serious thoughts | 10.70% | 11.22% |
| Ages 18 to 25 with serious thoughts | 11.45% | 12.40% |
| Adults who made a suicide plan | 1.62% | 1.60% |
| Adults who attempted suicide | 0.80% | 0.70% |
| Adults with any mental illness | 20.73% | 23.12% |
| Received any mental health treatment | 19.56% | 22.90% |
Source: SAMHSA, 2023-2024 NSDUH state tables, Texas, Table 98B and Total U.S., Table 2B, from the 2023-2024 state release.
For thoughts, plans and attempts, the Texas and national confidence intervals overlap, so the data does not show Texans thinking about suicide more or less than other Americans.
The treatment line is a real difference. 19.56 percent of Texas adults received any mental health treatment in the past year, against 22.90 percent nationally, and the confidence intervals around those two figures do not overlap. The same gap appears among people aged 12 to 17: 23.69 percent in Texas against 28.49 percent nationally.
Where do these numbers come from, and how current are they?
The years don’t all match, because the agencies publish on different schedules. The national death total is 2024. The national breakdown by sex, age and race is 2023, the most recent year the CDC has released in full. The Texas death data is 2019 to 2022, the most recent state brief. The survey estimates are 2023 and 2024 combined. Each is the newest published version of that particular figure.
Two of the surveys are not interchangeable. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health is a household survey with its own question wording. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey is a school survey with different wording and a different population, so its youth figures should not be set beside the household survey’s.
Where two figures sit inside each other’s confidence intervals, this page says so rather than reporting a difference.
Sources, in the order they appear: CDC Suicide Data and Statistics; NCHS FastStats; NIMH Suicide statistics; NCHS Data Brief 541; SAMHSA 2024 NSDUH highlights; CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey report; Texas DSHS Violent Death Reporting System; America’s Health Rankings; SAMHSA 2023-2024 state tables. Full citations with links are at the end of the page.
Treatment for adults in Texas
North Texas DBT Associates provides Comprehensive Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adults, by telehealth across Texas. Comprehensive DBT is the version of DBT that was tested in the clinical trials: weekly individual therapy, a weekly skills group, phone coaching between sessions, and a weekly therapist consultation team. Courtney Hicks is a DBT-Linehan Board of Certification Certified Clinician.
You can read about how Comprehensive DBT works, see the program, meet our clinicians, check where we work, and read our fees, including the sliding scale.
Contact North Texas DBT Associates, call (817) 214-7200, or email info@ntxdbt.com. If it’s urgent, call or text 988.
The rest of this series
Three companion posts, written for Suicide Prevention Month 2026:
- Does DBT work for suicidal behavior?: what the randomized trials found.
- Suicide crisis resources for Texas: who to call, what to text, and what happens next.
- Why evidence-based treatment for suicide matters: Comprehensive DBT against DBT-informed therapy.
Sources:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide Data and Statistics. 2024 final data: 48,824 deaths; rates of 22.2 per 100,000 among males and 5.6 among females; highest rates among non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native and non-Hispanic White people; people aged 80 and older with the highest age-specific rates; 14.3 million adults with serious thoughts, 4.6 million plans, 2.2 million attempts.
- National Center for Health Statistics. FastStats: Suicide and Self-Harm Injury. Rate of 14.4 per 100,000 and tenth leading cause of death, 2024.
- National Institute of Mental Health. Suicide statistics page, drawing on CDC WISQARS. 2023 rates by sex, age, race and ethnicity; 2023 total of 49,316; 12.6 percent of adults aged 18 to 25 with serious thoughts.
- Garnett MF, Zehner M. Changes in Suicide Rates in the United States From 2022 to 2023. NCHS Data Brief No. 541, September 2025.
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Highlights for the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report: 2013-2023. 20 percent of high school students seriously considered attempting suicide, 16 percent made a plan, 9 percent attempted.
- Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas Violent Death Reporting System. Texas Suicide Deaths 2019-2022, June 2025.
- America’s Health Rankings. Suicide in Texas, 2023 data from CDC WONDER.
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 2023-2024 NSDUH State Data Tables, release page.
- SAMHSA. Texas, Table 98B: Substance Use Disorder, Substance Use Treatment, and Mental Health Measures, by Age Group, Annual Average Percentages, 2023 and 2024. Texas figures in the comparison table.
- SAMHSA. Total U.S., Table 2B: the same measures for the United States, 2023 and 2024. National figures in the comparison table.
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Every source above was opened and checked on 8 September 2026, and each figure was checked against its page again on 23 September 2026.