What racial and ethnic groups experienced the largest suicide rate changes in 2024–2025?
Executive summary
Available federal and peer-reviewed reporting does not provide finalized, comprehensive death-rate comparisons strictly for a “2024–2025” interval; instead, recent surveillance through 2023 and behavioral-health surveys in 2024 point to which racial and ethnic groups have shown the largest shifts going into 2024–2025. The clearest patterns in the published sources are that American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations experienced the largest proportional rises in suicide deaths in the recent multi‑year period, non‑Hispanic White people continued to have one of the highest absolute suicide rates through 2023, and non‑Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and people identifying as two or more races have shown notable increases in ideation or rate trends that warrant close attention [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. The headline: American Indian and Alaska Native people showed the largest proportional increases in recent years
Multiple analyses and news summaries highlight that American Indian and Alaska Native people experienced the steepest proportional increase in suicide mortality in the period leading up to the most recent federal reports—an example cited is a 26% rise between 2018 and 2021 reported in CDC analyses and summarized in media coverage [1], and CDC datasets place AI/AN among the groups with the highest suicide rates in 2023 [2]. These findings have been repeatedly flagged as a major disparity and a priority for prevention efforts [3].
2. Absolute burden: non‑Hispanic White people remained among the highest‑rate groups through 2023
While proportional increases have been large for some minority groups, non‑Hispanic White people continued to register one of the highest age‑adjusted suicide death rates in 2023, a fact explicitly noted in CDC surveillance materials that list non‑Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native and non‑Hispanic White people as the groups with the highest rates in 2023 [2]. That pattern reflects a high absolute burden even when proportional changes among other groups are steeper [5].
3. Rising trends among Black and Hispanic populations—biggest percent increases in some intervals
CDC data and technical briefs document that, since about 2018, the age‑adjusted suicide rate for non‑Hispanic White people initially declined through 2020 while non‑Hispanic Black and Hispanic groups continued to increase; preliminary 2021 data showed sharper percentage rises for non‑Hispanic Black (about 13%) and Hispanic (about 8%) people compared with White people for that single year comparison [3]. Those mid‑period jumps underline that the “largest changes” depend on whether one measures absolute rate, proportional change, or short‑term year‑to‑year spikes [3].
4. Mental‑health measures in 2024 point to severe distress among multiracial and younger groups
Survey‑based surveillance from 2024 shows that suicidal ideation and attempts cluster differently than mortality: prevalence of serious suicidal thoughts in 2024 was highest among adults who identify with two or more races (10.7%), and young adults aged 18–25 had the highest prevalence overall [4]. That signals that behavioral‑health burden and future mortality risk may be rising in groups not always reflected in death‑certificate statistics yet [4].
5. Data caveats, classification biases and provisional reporting change the narrative
All of the cited surveillance is subject to methodological caveats: CDC provisional mortality files and WONDER extracts are updated over time and the most recent public datasets focus through 2023 with some provisional 2024 inputs [5] [2]; death‑certificate racial/ethnic misclassification (for example, modest underreporting of Hispanic decedents) can bias comparisons [3]; and measures of ideation/attempts from NSDUH or NIMH capture different constructs than death rates and can move independently [4]. These limitations mean that definitive “2024–2025 death‑rate changes by race/ethnicity” are not fully settled in the provided sources [2] [5] [4].
6. What this implies for interpretation and policy focus
Given the evidence, the strongest, consistent signals are that AI/AN communities have experienced the largest proportional increases in suicide mortality in recent years and that non‑Hispanic White people account for a high absolute suicide rate through 2023, while non‑Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and multiracial groups have experienced concerning rises in both mortality in some intervals and in suicidal thoughts in survey data [1] [2] [3] [4]. Policymakers and public‑health responders should therefore track both death records and real‑time survey indicators, adjust for classification biases, and prioritize culturally tailored prevention where proportional rises and absolute burdens overlap [3] [5].