The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention

At a glance

The 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention provides concrete recommendations for addressing gaps in the suicide prevention field. It is accompanied by the Federal Action Plan, which includes over 200 actions across the Federal government to be taken over the next three years in support of these goals.

National Strategy for Suicide Prevention 2024. Care. Connect. Collaborate.

About the National Strategy

The 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (NSSP) is a bold new 10-year, comprehensive, whole-of-society approach to suicide prevention that provides concrete recommendations for addressing gaps in the suicide prevention field. This coordinated and comprehensive approach to suicide prevention at the national, state, tribal, local, and territorial levels relies upon critical partnerships across the public and private sectors. People with lived experience are critical to the success of this work.

The National Strategy seeks to prevent suicide risk in the first place; identify and support people with increased risk through treatment and crisis intervention; prevent reattempts; promote long-term recovery; and support survivors of suicide loss.

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List of National strategy for suicide prevention contributors
Many agencies and organizations worked together to create the NSSP.

Strategic directions and goals

The 2024 National Strategy includes 15 goals and 87 objectives organized under four strategic directions:

Strategic Direction 1: Community-Based Suicide Prevention

  • Goal 1: Establish effective, broad-based, collaborative, and sustainable suicide prevention partnerships.
  • Goal 2: Support upstream comprehensive community-based suicide prevention.
  • Goal 3: Reduce access to lethal means among people at risk of suicide.
  • Goal 4: Conduct postvention and support people with suicide-centered lived experience.
  • Goal 5: Integrate suicide prevention into the culture of the workplace and into other community settings.
  • Goal 6: Build and sustain suicide prevention infrastructure at the state, tribal, local, and territorial levels.
  • Goal 7: Implement research-informed suicide prevention communication activities in diverse populations using best practices from communication science.

Strategic Direction 2: Treatment and Crisis Services

  • Goal 8: Implement effective suicide prevention services as a core component of health care.
  • Goal 9: Improve the quality and accessibility of crisis care services across all communities.

Strategic Direction 3: Surveillance, Quality Improvement, and Research

  • Goal 10: Improve the quality, timeliness, scope, usefulness, and accessibility of data needed for suicide-related surveillance, research, evaluation, and quality improvement.
  • Goal 11: Promote and support research on suicide prevention.

Strategic Direction 4: Health Equity in Suicide Prevention

  • Goal 12: Embed health equity into all comprehensive suicide prevention activities.
  • Goal 13: Implement comprehensive suicide prevention strategies for populations disproportionately affected by suicide, with a focus on historically marginalized communities, persons with suicide-centered lived experience, and youth.
  • Goal 14: Create an equitable and diverse suicide prevention workforce that is equipped and supported to address the needs of the communities they serve.
  • Goal 15: Improve and expand effective suicide prevention programs for populations disproportionately impacted by suicide across the life span through improved data, research, and evaluation.

The Federal Action Plan

Cover of the 2024 National Strategy for Suicide Prevention Federal Action Plan
The National Strategy is accompanied by the first ever Federal Action Plan.

The National Strategy is accompanied by the first ever Federal Action Plan (Action Plan), which identifies more than 200 actions across the Federal government to be taken over the next three years in support of the NSSP's goals.

These actions include:

  • Evaluating promising community-based suicide prevention strategies
  • Identifying ways to address substance use/overdose and suicide risk together in the clinical setting
  • Funding a mobile crisis locator for use by 988 crisis centers
  • Increasing support for survivors of suicide loss and others whose lives have been impacted by suicide

These actions will be monitored and evaluated regularly to determine progress and success, and to further identify barriers to suicide prevention.

Injury Center's actions

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CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control is leading 25 actions in the Federal Action Plan. Chart of strategic directions.
CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control is leading 25 actions in the Federal Action Plan.

CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control is leading 25 actions in the Federal Action Plan.

Goals and objectives
Action
2.6, 3.4, 8.4, 10.4
CDC will continue to collect data and implement activities that address shared risk and protective factors related to suicide and substance use.
2.6, 3.4, 12.3
CDC will implement activities that can address shared risk and protective factors for substance use and suicide with a focus on youth within the Drug-Free Communities (DFC) program.
2.7, 13.2, 13.3, 13.4, 13.7
CDC will work with SAMHSA and NIH to test and evaluate promising suicide prevention strategies.
2.7, 2.8, 5.3
CDC will develop and promote a toolkit for evaluating upstream suicide prevention activities in Veteran serving organizations.
2.8
If additional funding is available, CDC will expand the Comprehensive Suicide Prevention program.
3.1, 3.2
CDC will assess prevalence of practices related to safe storage of lethal means at the state and national levels to inform prevention efforts
6.2
CDC will conduct a series of community learning forums/webinars that support dissemination of resources and tools to help build comprehensive suicide prevention capacity among local, state, and tribal public health agencies.
7, 13.1, 13.2, 13.3
CDC, in collaboration with SAMHSA, will lead the development of a Suicide Prevention Communication Playbook focused on how to develop behavior change communication campaigns.
7.1
CDC will release a Vital Signs report on suicide that examines disparities.
7.4
CDC and SAMHSA will collaborate on the development and implementation of a national suicide prevention campaign, pending.
7.6
CDC will collaborate with partners to develop training for journalists on how to find, interpret, and use suicide data.
8.9, 2.6
CDC will support training of clinicians, health care providers, and gatekeepers in effective intervention, treatment, and follow-up for patients at risk of suicide and overdose.
9.2, 9.5, 9.6
CDC will increase collaboration and coordination between 988 and other call centers to improve jurisdictional coordination.
10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4
CDC will complete a data challenge related to understanding risk and protective factors for suicide outcomes.
10.2, 10.3
CDC will collaborate with SAMHSA to explore sharing and use of de-identified Suicide Prevention Lifeline and other data.
10.2
CDC will continue to improve timeliness and understanding of intent of emergency department visits for firearm-related injuries.
10.2
CDC will add social determinants of health data to the NVDRS Restricted Access Dataset to enable data users to explore suicide-related risk and protective factors.
10.2
CDC will add social determinants of health data to the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Health Equity module.
10.4
CDC will combine surveillance data on emergency department visits associated with mental health conditions with suicide-related outcome data to understand how trends in mental health ED visits relate to trends in suicide-related outcomes.
10.4
CDC will support linkage of surveillance data on suicides with data from prior emergency department visits to elucidate common reasons for medical visits in the year prior to a suicide
11.4
CDC will continue to fund applied public health research that can expand understanding of shared risk and protective factors for suicide
13.3, 15.4
CDC will identify and share with the public and suicide prevention partners and practitioners’ accomplishments and lessons learned.
14.2, 2.6
CDC will facilitate and track health care professionals’ education on best practices for reducing stigma associated with suicide and overdose.
15.5, 2.3, 2.7, 13.1
CDC will support implementation of tools and other resources available for Indigenous evaluation such as an Indigenous Evaluation Toolkit for Suicide Prevention Programs.
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Content Source:
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control