Changing Trends in Suicide Mortality and Firearm Involvement Among Black Young Adults in the United States, 1999–2019

Abstract

The suicide rate among adolescents and young adults in the United States increased 57% between 2007 and 2018, from 6.8 to 10.7 deaths per 100 000 individuals. Recent research characterized as alarming the increases in overall suicide rates among young Black and other racial/ethnic minority populations. To assess the temporal trends in overall suicide and firearm suicide mortality rates among non-Hispanic Black young adults, we conducted a sex-specific Joinpoint regression analysis to identify changing trends in these rates between 1999 and 2019. Data were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System. Results showed an 84.5% increase in the firearm suicide rate among young Black men and a 76.9% increase among young Black women between 2013 and 2019. Additional research is needed to investigate potential population-level exposures during or before 2013 that may have influenced suicide and firearm suicide risk.

Keywords:

• Black young adults
• firearm
• gender
• suicide
• temporal trends

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Dennys Estevez, MPH and Lauren E.M. Bedel, MPH, both at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, for their assistance collecting and cleaning data for this study. Both received compensation for their work.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

MSK conceptualized and designed the study, contributed to the analysis, and drafted the initial manuscript. RSB and AMW contributed to the design and performed the analysis. All the authors discussed the results, contributed to the writing, and approved the final manuscript as submitted.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data are available in a publicly, open access repository.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark S. Kaplan

Mark S. Kaplan, Amelia C. Mueller-Williams, Department of Social Welfare, Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Amelia C. Mueller-Williams

Mark S. Kaplan, Amelia C. Mueller-Williams, Department of Social Welfare, Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Sidra Goldman-Mellor

Sidra Goldman-Mellor, Department of Public Health, University of California, Merced, CA, USA and

Rie Sakai-Bizmark

Rie Sakai-Bizmark, Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Department of Social Welfare, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, 3250 Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles E. Young Dr. E. Los Angeles, CA, 0095-1656, USA. Email: [email protected]