Week 7: Suicide Rates and AI
Suicide Trends in the United States (2019–2023) and Potential Links to AI Chatbots Recent U.S. Suicide Statistics and Trends (2019–2023) Over the past five years, the United States has experienced notable fluctuations in suicide mortality. After a long-term rise, the national suicide rate peaked in 2018 at about 14.2 per 100,000 population [1] , then declined in 2019 and 2020 . In 2019 the age-adjusted suicide rate was 13.9 per 100,000 , dropping to 13.5 in 2020 [2] . This represented a roughly 5% decrease from 2018 to 2020 [3] , with annual deaths falling from 47,511 in 2019 to 45,979 in 2020 [4] . However, suicides began rising again in 2021 , and by 2022 the rate had returned to roughly 14.2 per 100,000 – essentially back to the 2018 peak [3] . Provisional data for 2022 showed a record high number of suicide deaths (about 49,400 ), exceeding the previous high in 2018 by over 1,000 cases [5] [6] . In 2021 , there were 48,183 suicide deaths (rate ~14.0), and in 2022 about...