Adult Suicide Mortality in the United States: Individual and Contextual Covariates

Richard G. Rogers, University of Colorado at Boulder
Justin T. Denney, University of Colorado at Boulder
Patrick M. Krueger, University of Colorado at Boulder

We examine individual and contextual risk factors for adult suicide mortality, a major social problem and a central cause of preventable death in the United States. We link nine consecutive years of the National Health Interview Survey (1986-1994) to the Multiple Cause of Death file through the National Death Index (1986-1997), and use Cox proportional hazard models to examine how demographic, social, and health factors are related to the risk of suicide mortality in the United States. We find that individual level characteristics--age, sex, marital status, family size, education, employment status, existing medical conditions, and veteran status--as well as contextual factors--as measures of social disorganization--are related to suicide mortality risks. These results reveal important mechanisms that contribute to suicide mortality risk, a central preventable cause of death in the United States.