Suicidal ideation among community-dwelling adults in the United States

We examined the prevalence and correlates of past-year suicidal ideation among US community-dwelling adults.

We examined data from 183 100 persons aged 18 years or older (including 9800 sampled adults with past-year suicidal ideation) who participated in the 2008-2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. We applied descriptive analyses and pooled and stratified (by age and major depression) multivariate logistic regression models.

The prevalence of past-year suicidal ideation among younger adults (6.6% among those aged 18-25 years and 4.0% among those aged 26-49 years) was higher than was that among adults aged 50 years or older (2.5%). The prevalence of suicidal ideation was high among adults with major depression (26.3%), adults with both major depression and substance use disorder (37.7%), and adults who received mental health treatment but perceived unmet treatment need (33.5%).

Many risk and protective factors of suicidal ideation are dynamic and vary by age or major depression. These results have important implications for developing specific suicide prevention strategies that help screen, assess, and treat suicidal adults at the earliest possible time.