Suicides by Age
Notes: Data include suicide deaths that occurred in Rhode Island among Rhode Island residents. In compliance with RIDOH’s Small Number Reporting Policy, counts of less than five are not shown. Any use of counts to calculate rates and proportions is subject to RIDOH’s Small Number Reporting Policy available at: health.ri.gov/publications/policies/smallnumbersreporting.pdf
Discussion
This bar chart shows the age of people who die by suicide compared to how many people are in that age group. You can see that, for example, while 33% of Rhode Islanders are under 24, this group accounted for 10% of suicides between 2015-2019. However, while 55-64-year olds were only 12% of the population, they accounted for 22% of suicides in that time period. This is in line with national data that show middle-aged people to be the group that most often dies by suicide. In general, younger age groups and people over 85 are the groups that least often die by suicide.
Tips for understanding the data on this page
It’s helpful to understand what some of the data terms mean. Here is information about percentages and rates.
Percentages tell us how many people have died by suicide compared to the whole group of people. For instance: when we look at the percentages of people who have died by age, the graph shows us out of all the suicide deaths in the state, how many deaths were among people under 24 and over 65.
Rates tell us how many people have died by suicide compared to a larger group, taking into account the population size of that group. For instance: when we look at race/ethnicity by rates, we can see that Black, non-Hispanic Rhode Islanders have a higher rate of death from suicide than you might assume based on the percent of suicide deaths in 2015-2019 that were amongst Black, non-Hispanic Rhode Islanders. This is because we have adjusted for the smaller population of Black, non-Hispanic Rhode Islanders in the state.