Summary: Suicide Prevention Month 2025 occurs during the month of September. During Suicide Prevention Month 2025, government agencies, non-profit groups, and individuals from around the country unite to raise awareness about suicidality and help people learn how they can join the suicide prevention and reduction movement.
Key Facts:
- With professional, community, family, and social support, suicide is preventable
- Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people aged 10-24 in the U.S.
- Over 49,000 people died by suicide in the U.S. in 2023
- More women than men attempt suicide, but men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women
FIND SUPPORT RIGHT NOW
Never ignore talk of suicide. If you or someone you know is at imminent risk of harm, call 911 or go to the emergency room.
In a mental health crisis?
- Call or Text the National Help Line at 988
- Trained crisis support counselors available 24/7/365
Need help, but not in crisis?
- Text “NAMI” to 62640
- Call 1-800-950-6264
- Call or text Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. ET
What is Suicide Prevention Month 2025?
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and a collaborative group of non-profit advocacy groups join together to sponsor and organize Suicide Prevention Month. Here’s how the advocates at NAMI describe this important collective effort:
“Each September, NAMI recognizes this dedicated time to raise awareness, spread hope, and spark meaningful action around one of the most urgent mental health issues of our time. Our goal is to ensure that individuals, friends, and families have access to the tools, resources, and support they need to talk openly about suicide prevention, recognize warning signs, and seek help.”
The theme for Suicide Prevention Month 2025 is:
Start a Conversation. Be the Difference.
Here’s why starting a conversation matters:
“With one conversation, asking someone how they’re really doing — and being ready to truly listen — can save lives. Because here’s what we know: No one has to face this alone. Help exists. Healing is possible. And all it can take is for one person to start a conversation.”
Let’s say you’re ready to start a conversation, but you’re afraid to because you don’t feel like an expert and the last thing you want to do is cause harm by making the situation worse. We’ll let you in on a secret: that’s how almost everyone feels, and those feelings are one hundred percent valid. However, we’ll let you in on two more secrets. Actually, they’re not secrets. They’re important facts everyone interested in helping reduce and prevent suicide need to know.
- You don’t have to have answers. Many people who experience suicidal thoughts say when they called a suicide helpline, they weren’t looking for advice. They weren’t sure what they were looking for. However, they report that kindness, compassion, and empathy are what helped them and got them on the road to recovery.
- Asking about suicide does not increase suicide risk. Most of us have the idea that if someone isn’t thinking about suicide, asking about it might put the idea in their head. There is no data to support this. In fact, the opposite is true. An expression of concern and active, nonjudgmental listening form a concerned, supportive person – think empathy, compassion, and kindness – can help change despair to hope.
We’ll share our best advice on how to start a conversation with a friend or loved one you think may be at risk. First, let’s review the most recent data on suicide and suicidality.
Suicidality in the U.S.: Facts and Figures
Rates of suicidality in the U.S., particularly among young people, have increased steadily over the past 18 years. Except for 2018 and 2023, we’ve witnessed an increase in suicide attempts year-over-year, alongside increases in having serious thoughts about suicide and making a suicide plan. That’s one reason among many that the Surgeon General of the United States indicated, back in 2021, that we’re in the midst of an ongoing mental health crisis among our youth:
Protecting Youth Mental Health: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory (SGA) 2021
That’s also why we publish articles like this one on our blog:
Are Suicide Rates Still Increasing for Teens and Young Adults?
We encourage you to read those articles to understand the context for Suicide Prevention Month 2025. To help further illuminate the big picture, we’ll share a selection of the most recent data we have on suicidality, which includes thinking about suicide, planning, suicide, and attempting suicide.
We’ll focus primarily on one area: people thinking about suicide. The data below were published by the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2024 NSDUH), the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Serious Thoughts of Suicide in the Past Year Among U.S. Adults Aged 18+
- Total: 5%
- Men: 4.5%
- Women: 5.5%
- Orientation:
- Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual: 18%
- Race/ethnicity:
- Non-Hispanic Multiracial: 12%
- Non-Hispanic White: 5%
- Hispanic or Latino: 5%
- Non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native: 4.7%
- Non-Hispanic Asian: 4.2%
- Non-Hispanic Black: 4%
- Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander: 2.6%
Next, the data on high school students, LGBTQ+ high school students/youth, and young adults.
Serious Thoughts of Suicide in the Past Year Among U.S. Youth Under Age 25
- High school students:
- Total: 20%
- LGBTQ+: 41%
- LGBTQ+ young people ages 13-24: 39%
- Young adults ages 18-25: 12.2%
Finally, we’ll share the most disturbing statistics of all: suicide fatalities over the past three years.
Suicide Fatalities 2021-2023, Total, United States
- 2021: 48,080
- 2022: 49,437
- 2023: 49,380
Those figures are, in a word, sobering. Every single death by suicide is a tragedy. However, there’s something we can all do: we can work to help reduce an prevent suicide. We can join the advocacy movement in many ways. One of the most effective ways is to support the people in your life you know may be at risk.
Starting and Having the Conversation: Our Top Tips for Suicide Prevention Month 2025
Many of us want to help by supporting people important to use who we know are going through troubles and having a hard time coping, but many of us have no idea how to start a conversation on a sensitive, consequential topic like suicide. That’s okay, because we found the perfect resource to help get past the initial hesitation and have a productive conversation.
This resource was designed for teens and younger people, but the fact is that it applies to anyone of any age. It’s called Seize The…Awkward. We adapted the following three tips from their helpful content and easy-to-access resources.
1. What You Can Say.
Please take a moment to watch this video. Then, when thinking about how to initiate a conversation about suicide – or other mental health issues – consider the following conversatin starters:
- Seems like somethings up. You wanna talk?
- If you’re not okay I want to know and want to listen. Are you okay?
- I’ve noticed you’ve been down lately. What’s going on?
- You haven’t been yourself lately. What’s up?
- That’s not like you. Are you okay?
- I know you’re going through some stuff. I’m here for you. I’ll listen if you want to talk.
- I’ve got your back no matter what’s going on.
- Okay, this awkward but I’d like to know if you’re okay, because you matter.
- I’m worried about you and want to help.
- Is there anything you want to talk about?
- You seem really frustrated today. Want a hug? Want to talk?
2. When to Say It.
There may never be a perfect time to initiate this conversation. However, you increase your chances of having a productive conversation if it happens at a time and place you both feel safe and comfortable. Try these times:
- Invite your friend to join you playing your favorite sport. During a pickup game of one-on-one basketball or your preferred sport, you can decide how you want to check in, and check in.
- Initiate the conversation – casually – while playing a game online.
- Ask them to get a coffee or a bite to eat after class, after school, after practice, or any shared activity.
- Send them a simple DM or text that says, “What’s up?”
- If they’re not into sports or online gaming, wait until you’re doing a shared hobby or activity – playing cards, for instance – and ask them then.
- Suggest taking walk around the neighborhood or going for a drive, and start the conversation when you’re both calm and relaxed.
3. What to Do Next.
Once you start the conversation, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the conversation is about them, their feelings, and what they’re going through. It’s not about you. You’re there to listen compassionately. Your job is not to be the genius who solves their life in one talk. Your job is to be the good friend who listens.
- Ask if they have support
- Keep it informal. You’re talking to a friend, not providing therapy.
- Ask open-ended questions, like those we share above.
- Remind them you’re there to listen, not judge.
- Let them share what they’re ready to share when they’re ready to share it. No forcing the issue and no tricky coaxing.
- Engage in active listening. Let them talk, and follow their lead.
- We know you want to help, but try to avoid sounding like an expert trying to fix them.
- Validate their feelings. Let them know that it’s okay to feel the way they feel.
- Try to guide, encourage, or suggest they seek expert help from a mental health professional.
- In the days and weeks after you talk, be available. Be a friend they know they can rely on.
If you follow those three general suggestions, and fill in the details with those specific options for each suggestion, you increase the likelihood the person will open up, and the conversation will be productive – meaning it helps your friend, peer, or loved one with whatever they’re going through.
One thing you may have noticed is that throughout this article, we encourage people having trouble, or people who want to help people having trouble, to seek professional mental health treatment. Why? Because professional mental health support is the best way to prevent and initial – or repeat – suicide attempt.
Psychotherapy for Suicidality: Is it Effective?
The factors that reduce risk of suicide are called protective factors. While the risk factors for suicide include emotions such as hopelessness and behaviors like withdrawing from friends and family – read this comprehensive list from the CDC – one of the most powerful protective factors, after a robust family and social support system, is professional support from trained therapist or counselor.
In 2024, a group of researchers conducted a large-scale review on peer-reviewed, evidence-based data on the effectiveness of psychotherapy in reducing thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts. The study, “Suicidal Ideation and Suicide Attempts After Direct or Indirect Psychotherapy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” is important because it’s a meta-analysis, which means the authors reviewed all available data on the topic to identify the top-line trends.
In the context of this study, direct psychotherapy means therapy with a specific focus on reducing suicidality, and indirect psychotherapy means psychotherapy for mental health that’s not specifically focused on suicidality.
Here’s what they found:
- Patients who engaged in direct psychotherapy experienced:
- 39% reduction in suicidal ideation
- 28% reduction in suicide attempts
- Patients who engaged in indirect psychotherapy experienced:
- 30% reduction in suicidal ideation
- 32% reduction in suicide attempts
That’s why we suggest professional support: evidence indicates that it works. The most common approach to supporting patients with suicidal behavior such as suicidal ideation includes a combination of individual, family, and group psychotherapy, medication (if/when needed), complementary approaches such as mindfulness and expressive therapies, and lifestyle changes such as healthy eating, sleep hygiene, and daily exercise and activity.
With all of that said, please remember that the most important takeaway for Suicide Prevention Month 2025 is the theme:
Start a Conversation. Be the Difference.
In 2025, you can start a conversation and be the difference for someone who matters to you. Remember: the sooner a person who needs mental health support gets the treatment they need, the better the outcome.
