While Washington’s firearm suicide rate decreased 9% from 2017 to 2018, it was still slightly higher than the United States’ rate.
While Washington’s firearm suicide rate decreased 9% from 2017 to 2018, it was still slightly higher than the United States’ rate.
Number of deaths
The “other” category is defined as any firearm death that is not defined by the CDC as a homicide or a suicide. This could include unintentional, undetermined, and legal intervention. To obtain the number of deaths in the “other” category, the total number of firearm suicide deaths and firearm homicide deaths were subtracted from the overall firearm deaths in a given year.
Age-adjusted rate per 100,000
Age-Adjusted Firearm Suicide Rate per 100,000
The CDC suppresses data in which fewer than 10 deaths are reported in a given time frame and considers firearm suicide rates based on fewer than 20 deaths “statistically unreliable.” Counties that meet this criteria are labeled “Suppressed/Unreliable.”
The majority of suicide decedents are males. In Washington, White (non Latino) males in particular are disproportionately impacted by firearm suicide. American Indian/Alaska Native males have the second highest firearm suicide rate in the state.
The CDC considers firearm suicide rates based on fewer than 20 deaths “statistically unreliable” and suppresses firearm suicide rates based on fewer than 10 deaths. Fewer than 20 firearm suicides were reported during this time period for the following races and Hispanic Origin category and therefore are omitted from the above chart: American Indian/ Alaska Native females, Asian/ Pacific Islander females, Black females, and Hispanic/Latina females.
Notes:
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Suicide Deaths and Rates per 100,000. WONDER Online Database, 1999-2018. Available: http://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html.
This page was last updated March 2020.