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Suicide & Self-Harm Injuries

  • Purpose: To monitor population trends of suicide and self-harm injuries.
  • Key Information: Number of suicides and self-harm injuries which result in emergency room visits.

Rhode Island Numbers

  • Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Rhode Islanders ages 15 to 34. source
  • Rhode Island’s suicide death rate is slightly lower than the national rate
  • Rhode Island’s rate of self-harm injuries is slightly lower than the national rate
  • From 2010-2014 Rhode Island saw an overall decrease in its rates of encounters resulting from a suicide attempt in RI hospital emergency departments and in-patient facilities.

By Age Group

  • The cumulative suicide death rate for Rhode Island is slightly lower than the national rate across all age groups for the years of 2010-2016 except for 45-54 year olds, where the rate in RI is higher than the national rate.
  • Adults (ages 44-54) had the highest rate of suicide from 2010-2016 nationally and in Rhode Island.

By Gender

  • Males in Rhode Island continue to be more likely than females to die by suicide.

Suicidal Ideation among RI Youth and Adults:

  • In 2017, 15.9% of surveyed Rhode Island high school students they had considered suicide and 10.5% said they had attempted suicide. Source
  • From 2014-2015 4.4% of Rhode Island adults reported having serious thoughts of suicide. Source

*Denotes that rates are age-adjusted. Crude rates are influenced by the underlying age distribution of the state's population. Even if two states have the same age-adjusted rates, the state with the relatively older population generally will have higher crude rates because incidence or death rates for most cancers increase with increasing age. The age distribution of a population (the number of people in particular age categories) can change over time and can be different in different geographic areas. Age-adjusting the rates ensures that differences in incidence or deaths from one year to another, or between one geographic area and another, are not due to differences in the age distribution of the populations being compared.