How are depression and suicide related?

Many people wonder if depression increases the risk of suicide and, if so, by how much. Although the majority of people who have depression do not die by suicide, having clinical depression (also known as major depression) does increase the suicide risk compared to people without depression.

The risk of death by suicide may, in part, be related to the severity of the depression. New data on suicide and depression suggests that about 2 percent of those people ever treated for depression in an outpatient setting will die by suicide. Among those ever treated for depression in an inpatient hospital setting, the rate of death by suicide is twice as high (4 percent). Those treated for depression as inpatients following suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts are about three times as likely to die by suicide (6 percent) as those who were only treated as outpatients.

There are also dramatic gender differences in the lifetime risk of suicide in people with depression. While about 7 percent of men with a lifetime history of the condition will die by suicide, only 1 percent of women with a lifetime history will die by suicide.

Another way of thinking about depression and suicide risk is to examine the lives of people who have died by suicide and see what proportion of them were depressed. It is estimated that about 60 percent of people who commit suicide have had a mood disorder (major depression, manic depression, or dysthymia, for example). Often, younger persons who kill themselves have a substance abuse disorder in addition to being depressed.