Data on death rates for suicide, by selected population characteristics. Please refer to the PDF or Excel version of this table in the HUS 2019 Data Finder (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2019.htm) for critical information about measures, definitions, and changes over time. SOURCE: NCHS, National Vital Statistics System (NVSS); Grove RD, Hetzel AM. Vital statistics rates in the United States, 1940–1960. National Center for Health Statistics. 1968; numerator data from NVSS annual public-use Mortality Files; denominator data from U.S. Census Bureau national population estimates; and Murphy SL, Xu JQ, Kochanek KD, Arias E, Tejada-Vera B. Deaths: Final data for 2018. National Vital Statistics Reports; vol 69 no 13. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2021. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/nvsr.htm. For more information on the National Vital Statistics System, see the corresponding Appendix entry at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus19-appendix-508.pdf.

NOTE: This dataset is no longer supported and is provided as-is. Any historical knowledge regarding meta data or it's creation is no longer available. All known information is proved as part of this data set. The Veteran Health Administration, in support of the Open Data Initiative, is providing the Veterans Affairs Suicide Prevention Synthetic Dataset (VASPSD). The VASPSD was developed using a real, record-level dataset provided through the VA Office of Suicide Prevention. The VASPSD contains no real Veteran information, however, it reflects similar characteristics of the real dataset. NOTICE: This data is intended to appear similar to actual VASPSD data but it does not have any real predictive modeling value. It should not be used in any real world application.

Data on death rates for suicide in the United States, by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin. Data are from Health, United States. SOURCE: National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, Mortality File. Search, visualize, and download these and other estimates from over 120 health topics with the NCHS Data Query System (DQS), available from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/dataquery/index.htm.

THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 8:10 PM EASTERN ON MARCH 24

OVERVIEW

2019 had the most mass killings since at least the 1970s, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database.

In all, there were 45 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings . This summer was especially violent, with three high-profile public mass shootings occurring in the span of just four weeks, leaving 38 killed and 66 injured.

A total of 229 people died in mass killings in 2019.

The AP's analysis found that more than 50% of the incidents were family annihilations, which is similar to prior years. Although they are far less common, the 9 public mass shootings during the year were the most deadly type of mass murder, resulting in 73 people's deaths, not including the assailants.

One-third of the offenders died at the scene of the killing or soon after, half from suicides.

About this Dataset

The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours) regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database includes information on these and other characteristics concerning the incidents, offenders, and victims.

The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern database represents the most complete tracking of mass murders by the above definition currently available. Other efforts, such as the Gun Violence Archive or Everytown for Gun Safety may include events that do not meet our criteria, but a review of these sites and others indicates that this database contains every event that matches the definition, including some not tracked by other organizations.

This data will be updated periodically and can be used as an ongoing resource to help cover these events.

Using this Dataset

To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:

Mass killings by year

Mass shootings by year

To get these counts just for your state:

Filter killings by state

Definition of "mass murder"

Mass murder is defined as the intentional killing of four or more victims by any means within a 24-hour period, excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offender(s). The standard of four or more dead was initially set by the FBI.

This definition does not exclude cases based on method (e.g., shootings only), type or motivation (e.g., public only), victim-offender relationship (e.g., strangers only), or number of locations (e.g., one). The time frame of 24 hours was chosen to eliminate conflation with spree killers, who kill multiple victims in quick succession in different locations or incidents, and to satisfy the traditional requirement of occurring in a “single incident.”

Offenders who commit mass murder during a spree (before or after committing additional homicides) are included in the database, and all victims within seven days of the mass murder are included in the victim count. Negligent homicides related to driving under the influence or accidental fires are excluded due to the lack of offender intent. Only incidents occurring within the 50 states and Washington D.C. are considered.

Methodology

Project researchers first identified potential incidents using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Homicide incidents in the SHR were flagged as potential mass murder cases if four or more victims were reported on the same record, and the type of death was murder or non-negligent manslaughter.

Cases were subsequently verified utilizing media accounts, court documents, academic journal articles, books, and local law enforcement records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Each data point was corroborated by multiple sources, which were compiled into a single document to assess the quality of information.

In case(s) of contradiction among sources, official law enforcement or court records were used, when available, followed by the most recent media or academic source.

Case information was subsequently compared with every other known mass murder database to ensure reliability and validity. Incidents listed in the SHR that could not be independently verified were excluded from the database.

Project researchers also conducted extensive searches for incidents not reported in the SHR during the time period, utilizing internet search engines, Lexis-Nexis, and Newspapers.com. Search terms include: [number] dead, [number] killed, [number] slain, [number] murdered, [number] homicide, mass murder, mass shooting, massacre, rampage, family killing, familicide, and arson murder. Offender, victim, and location names were also directly searched when available.

This project started at USA TODAY in 2012.

Contacts

Contact AP Data Editor Justin Myers with questions, suggestions or comments about this dataset at jmyers@ap.org. The Northeastern University researcher working with AP and USA TODAY is Professor James Alan Fox, who can be reached at j.fox@northeastern.edu or 617-416-4400.

This report provides information regarding suicide mortality for the years 2001–2014. It incorporates the most recent mortality data from the VA/Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Suicide Data Repository and includes information for deaths from suicide among all known Veterans of U.S. military service. Data for the Joint VA/DoD Suicide Data Repository were obtained from the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Death Index through collaboration with the DoD, the CDC, and the VA/DoD Joint Suicide Data Repository initiative. Data available from the National Death Index include reports of mortality submitted from vital statistics systems in all 50 U.S. states, New York City, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Age-adjusted rate of suicide deaths by sex, race/ethnicity, age; trends if available. Source: Santa Clara County Public Health Department, VRBIS, 2007-2016. Data as of 05/26/2017; U.S. Census Bureau; 2010 Census, Tables PCT12, PCT12H, PCT12I, PCT12J, PCT12K, PCT12L, PCT12M; generated by Baath M.; using American FactFinder; Accessed June 20, 2017. METADATA:Notes (String): Lists table title, notes and sourcesYear (String): Year of data; presented as pooled years (2007 to 2016)Category (String): Lists the category representing the data: Santa Clara County is for total population, age categories as follows: <18, 18 to 44, 45 to 64, 65+; 10 to 19, 20 to 24; 10 to 24; <1, 1 to 4, 5 to 14, 15 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, 45 to 54, 55 to 64, 65 to 74, 75 to 84, 85+; United States and Healthy People 2020 targetRate per 100,000 people (Numeric): Suicide rate. Rates for age groups are reported as age-specific rates per 100,000 people. All other rates are age-adjusted rates per 100,000 people.

Effective September 27, 2023, this dataset will no longer be updated. Similar data are accessible from wonder.cdc.gov.

Provisional counts of deaths by the month the death occurred and by select causes of death for 2020-2023.

Over 170 thousand deaths due to suicides were recorded in India in 2022. Furthermore, majority of suicides were reported in the state of Tamil Nadu, followed by Rajasthan. The number of suicides that year had increased from the previous year. Some of the causes for suicides in the country were due to professional problems, abuse, violence, family problems, financial loss, sense of isolation and mental disorders.

Depressive disorders and suicide

As of 2015, over 322.48 million people worldwide suffered from some kind of depressive disorder. Furthermore, over 14 percent of the total population in India suffer from different forms of mental disorders as of 2017. There exists a positive correlation between the number of suicide mortality rates and people with select mental disorders as opposed to those without.

Risk factors for mental disorders

Every seventh person in India suffers from some form of mental disorder. Today, depressive disorders are regarded as the leading contributor not only to disease burden and morbidity worldwide, but even suicide if not addressed. In 2022, the leading cause for suicide deaths in India was due to family problems. The second leading cause was due to illness. Some of the risk factors, relative to developing mental disorders including depressive and anxiety disorders, include bullying victimization, poverty, unemployment, childhood sexual abuse and intimate partner violence.

This dataset contains counts of deaths for California counties based on information entered on death certificates. Final counts are derived from static data and include out-of-state deaths to California residents, whereas provisional counts are derived from incomplete and dynamic data. Provisional counts are based on the records available when the data was retrieved and may not represent all deaths that occurred during the time period. Deaths involving injuries from external or environmental forces, such as accidents, homicide and suicide, often require additional investigation that tends to delay certification of the cause and manner of death. This can result in significant under-reporting of these deaths in provisional data.

The final data tables include both deaths that occurred in each California county regardless of the place of residence (by occurrence) and deaths to residents of each California county (by residence), whereas the provisional data table only includes deaths that occurred in each county regardless of the place of residence (by occurrence). The data are reported as totals, as well as stratified by age, gender, race-ethnicity, and death place type. Deaths due to all causes (ALL) and selected underlying cause of death categories are provided. See temporal coverage for more information on which combinations are available for which years.

The cause of death categories are based solely on the underlying cause of death as coded by the International Classification of Diseases. The underlying cause of death is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "the disease or injury which initiated the train of events leading directly to death, or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury." It is a single value assigned to each death based on the details as entered on the death certificate. When more than one cause is listed, the order in which they are listed can affect which cause is coded as the underlying cause. This means that similar events could be coded with different underlying causes of death depending on variations in how they were entered. Consequently, while underlying cause of death provides a convenient comparison between cause of death categories, it may not capture the full impact of each cause of death as it does not always take into account all conditions contributing to the death.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.

To focus on the socio-cultural (including religious) contextual features that impact violent offending, victimization, and lethal self-harm, the researchers compiled county-level data on suicides, homicides, robbery, assault, religious adherence and demographic characteristics. The collection includes a data file with 62 variables and 3,140 cases in both SPSS and Stata formats. The file Religion_and_Violence_by_Race_Ethnicity_US_Counties_2010.sav is the SPSS version and Religion_and_Violence_by_Race_Ethnicity_US_Counties_2010.dta is the Stata version.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DICRA) requires the head of each federal law enforcement agency to submit to the U.S. attorney general, information about the death of any person who is detained, under arrest, or in the process of being arrested by a federal law enforcement officer (or by a state or local law enforcement officer while participating in a federal law enforcement operation, task force, or other capacity) being transported to, incarcerated at, or detained at any facility (including immigration or juvenile facilities) pursuant to a contract with a federal law enforcement agency, state or local government facility used by a federal law enforcement agency, or federal correctional or pre-trial detention facility located within the United States (Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013, P.L. 113-242). The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) created the Federal Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (FDCRP) to collect the data required of federal law enforcement agencies. Federal law enforcement agencies are surveyed on an annual basis about deaths that fall under the scope of DICRA. This data collection includes the 2020 Arrest-Related Death Incident Report (CJ-13A) data and the 2020 Detention/Incarceration Incident Report (CJ-13B) data.

This dataset contains counts of deaths for California residents by ZIP Code based on information entered on death certificates. Final counts are derived from static data and include out-of-state deaths of California residents. The data tables include deaths of residents of California by ZIP Code of residence (by residence). The data are reported as totals, as well as stratified by age and gender. Deaths due to all causes (ALL) and selected underlying cause of death categories are provided. See temporal coverage for more information on which combinations are available for which years.

The cause of death categories are based solely on the underlying cause of death as coded by the International Classification of Diseases. The underlying cause of death is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as "the disease or injury which initiated the train of events leading directly to death, or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury." It is a single value assigned to each death based on the details as entered on the death certificate. When more than one cause is listed, the order in which they are listed can affect which cause is coded as the underlying cause. This means that similar events could be coded with different underlying causes of death depending on variations in how they were entered. Consequently, while underlying cause of death provides a convenient comparison between cause of death categories, it may not capture the full impact of each cause of death as it does not always take into account all conditions contributing to the death.

These files contain the publicly available data and statistical code to reproduce the tables and figures found in: Harper S, Charters TJ, Strumpf EC, Galea S, Nandi A. Economic downturns and suicide mortality in the United States, 1980-2010: observational study. Int J Epidemiol 2015

The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) is a nationally representative public health surveillance system that has monitored drug related emergency department (ED) visits to hospitals since the early 1970s. First administered by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the responsibility for DAWN now rests with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ). Over the years, the exact survey methodology has been adjusted to improve the quality, reliability, and generalizability of the information produced by DAWN. The current approach was first fully implemented in the 2004 data collection year.
DAWN relies on a longitudinal probability sample of hospitals located throughout the United States. To be eligible for selection into the DAWN sample, a hospital must be a non-Federal, short-stay, general surgical and medical hospital located in the United States, with at least one 24-hour ED. DAWN cases are identified by the systematic review of ED medical records in participating hospitals. The unit of analysis is any ED visit involving recent drug use. DAWN captures both ED visits that are directly caused by drugs and those in which drugs are a contributing factor but not the direct cause of the ED visit. The reason a patient used a drug is not part of the criteria for considering a visit to be drug-related. Therefore, all types of drug-related events are included: drug misuse or abuse, accidental drug ingestion, drug-related suicide attempts, malicious drug poisonings, and adverse reactions. DAWN does not report medications that are unrelated to the visit.
The DAWN public-use dataset provides information for all types of drugs, including illegal drugs, prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, dietary supplements, anesthetic gases, substances that have psychoactive effects when inhaled, alcohol when used in combination with other drugs (all ages), and alcohol alone (only for patients aged 20 or younger). Public-use dataset variables describe and categorize up to 22 drugs contributing to the ED visit, including toxicology confirmation and route of administration. Administrative variables specify the type of case, case disposition, categorized episode time of day, and quarter of year. Metropolitan area is included for represented metropolitan areas. Created variables include the number of unique drugs reported and case-level indicators for alcohol, non-alcohol illicit substances, any pharmaceutical, non-medical use of pharmaceuticals, and all misuse and abuse of drugs. Demographic items include age category, sex, and race/ethnicity. Complex sample design and weighting variables are included to calculate various estimates of drug-related ED visits for the Nation as a whole, as well as for specific metropolitan areas, from the ED visits classified as DAWN cases in the selected hospitals.This study has 1 Data Set.

This study was initiated by the administrator of a county jail in the Northern Plains of the United States who was concerned about the incidence of suicide behaviors in that facility, particularly among the American Indian population. It was a two-year project designed to evaluate the existing admissions suicide screening tool and to improve the instrument's cultural relevance for the American Indian population. The existing screening instrument used in the county jail to interview inmates at their intake was developed in New York. The main objective of the first year of the project was to determine if that instrument was culturally appropriate for the jailed American Indian population. The principal objective of the second year of the project was to determine whether the employment of different suicide screening protocols would make a difference in the responses of new detainees with regard to the likelihood of securing their honest reports of experiencing suicide ideation and its associated risk factors. For the duration of the project, all male and female inmates aged 18 and older who were booked into the jail went through the customary booking procedure that included the administration of the New York Suicide Prevention Screening Guidelines. In the first year of the project, researchers also administered a short self-report survey consisting of measures commonly associated with suicidal ideation. The self-report survey measured stress, anxiety, suicide ideation, hopelessness, and suicidal behavior history. The protocols in the second year of the project reflected efforts to test different screening conditions for four experimental groups and one control group of new detainees. The outcome variables of the short self-report survey consisted of measures of demographics, comfort experience during booking and the screening process, self-efficacy and management of depression, knowledge of mental health support available within the jail, and general well-being. In addition to the quantitative data collection, qualitative data were also collected to develop a straightforward assessment of suicide ideation criteria in this specific jail setting using semi-structured focus group interviews.

As of 2023, around 18 percent of U.S. transgender and nonbinary youth who did not have gender-affirming spaces in schools reported attempting suicide in the past year, compared to 14 percent of youth who had gender-affirming spaces in schools. The statistic illustrates the share of U.S. transgender and nonbinary youth who attempted suicide in the past year as of 2023, by gender-affirming spaces.

Rank, number of deaths, percentage of deaths, and age-specific mortality rates for the leading causes of death, by age group and sex, 2000 to most recent year.

Mortality in Correctional Institutions (MCI) (formerly, the Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP)), is an annual data collection conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The MCI collection began in 2000 under the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-297). It is the only national statistical collection that obtains detailed information about deaths in adult correctional facilities. MCI collects data on persons dying in state prisons, local jails and in the process of arrest. Each collection is a separate subcollection, but each is under the umbrella of the MCI collection. This deals with the prison subcollection, which has a prison death file. The prison portion of Mortality in Correctional Institutions began in 2001 after the passage of the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 in October of 2000. The prison component of MCI collects data on inmate deaths occurring in the 50 state departments of corrections while inmates are in the physical custody of prison officials.

The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) provides states and communities with a clearer understanding of violent deaths to guide local decisions about efforts to prevent violence and helps them track progress over time. To stop violent deaths, we must first understand all the facts. Created in 2002, the NVDRS is a surveillance system that pulls together data on violent deaths in 18 states (see map below), including information about homicides, such as homicides perpetrated by a intimate partner (e.g., boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband), child maltreatment (or child abuse) fatalities, suicides, deaths where individuals are killed by law enforcement in the line of duty, unintentional firearm injury deaths, and deaths of undetermined intent. These data are supported by WISQARS, an interactive query system that provides data on injury deaths, violent deaths, and nonfatal injuries.