United States · Ages 0–17 · January 1999 – January 2026
This page shows how many children under 18 die by suicide in the United States, and how that has changed since 1999. It is here to help reporters get the story right. Tick “Explanations” at the top for the full detail, the statistics and the sources. Questions: dr.tylerblack@gmail.com
Every point below is one month of United States suicide deaths among children and adolescents under 18, expressed as an annualized rate per 100,000 and adjusted for the length of the month. Monthly counts are small, so single months move a lot on their own; the tools here are built to separate that noise from the trend before anyone writes a number down.
Child suicide is rare. In a typical month about 40 to 70 boys and 40 to 70 girls die this way in the whole country. Small numbers jump around on their own, so one month going up or down usually means nothing at all.
These numbers are for ages 0 to 17. Almost no child under 10 dies by suicide, but all of those young children are still counted in the group. That makes this rate much lower than the rate for teenagers on their own. Do not mix the two up.
School months are the risky months, not the holidays. June, July and August are the lowest months of the year. The “holiday spike” you may have heard about is not real.
How you report this matters. Coverage of suicide changes how many people die. Follow the rules at reportingonsuicide.org: do not describe methods or places, do not say a death had one simple cause, and always include help information. In the US and Canada, call or text 988.
Small numbers, wide intervals. A typical month holds roughly 40–70 deaths per sex. Every rate on this page carries a 95% confidence interval; if two intervals overlap heavily, the difference between them is not something to build a headline on.
Deaths under age 10 are rare. The 0–17 denominator includes about 36 million children of each sex, most of them below the age at which suicide occurs at any measurable rate. Rates for 0–17 are therefore much lower than rates for adolescents alone, and the two are not interchangeable.
Seasonality is real and runs opposite to the folklore. Use the seasonality view before repeating anything about holiday peaks.
Safe reporting. Coverage of suicide affects rates. Recommendations at reportingonsuicide.org apply to data stories too: avoid framing any rise as inexplicable or as a single cause, skip method and location detail, and carry help information — in the US, call or text 988.