We’re finally turning the tide on suicide rates. Don’t pull back now.

Opinion>Opinions - Healthcare The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill We’re finally turning the tide on suicide rates. Don’t pull back now. Comments: by Allison Arwady and J. Nadine Gracia, opinion contributors - 06/30/26 9:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Allison Arwady and J. Nadine Gracia, opinion contributors - 06/30/26 9:30 AM ET Comments: Link copied

Title: Suicide Mental Health Image ID: 18158739150286 Article: FILE - In this Oct. 15, 2017, file photo, a child plays beside a message board adorned with notes for loved ones who took their own lives during an Out of the Darkness Walk event organized by the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at Sawyer Point Park in Cincinnati. Suicide rates inched up in nearly every U.S. state from 1999 through 2016, according to a new government report released Thursday, June 7, 2018. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

FILE – In this Oct. 15, 2017, file photo, a child plays beside a message board adorned with notes for loved ones who took their own lives during an Out of the Darkness Walk event organized by the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at Sawyer Point Park in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

For the last two decades, suicide rates have been rising. This year, that rate declined significantly.

As former directors of federal health agencies that worked to prevent suicide, it is encouraging to see some hard-won progress. For decades, the suicide rate mostly went up — rising roughly 25 percent over the last 20 years, with spikes in 2018 and 2022 and fluctuations in recent years.

But in 2024, the suicide mortality rate declined by 3 percen t, and that decline held across nearly every population group, according to new research by the Trust For America’s Health, where one of us is president and CEO. This is not a minor statistical blip. That’s almost 500 more people alive today.

That is real success, and it’s worth celebrating, especially as we are seeing declines in deaths from drug overdoses and alcohol as well. At the same time, it’s incredibly fragile — because right now, the very workforce, programs and infrastructure responsible for this progress are being gutted.

Neither of us came to this work recently. We have spent our careers working with health leaders across the country and have seen, up close, the painstaking effort of building and implementing programs that actually reach people most at risk of suicide. What we know from that experience is this: progress doesn’t happen by accident. National, state and community-level prevention programs and partnerships supported by federal funds and expertise have driven this decline.

Take, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Essence program, which funds early data warning systems that allow communities to monitor for potential increases in suicide and take immediate action. These systems help local health departments quickly identify a rise in the number of people coming into emergency departments having self-harm or suicidal thoughts or attempting suicide and then alert local decision-makers or school districts to rapidly deploy suicide prevention and education resources where and when they are needed most.

Essence has helped build strong rapid-response suicide prevention programs in Louisiana and Tennessee that can reach all populations, but especially young people for whom suicide is the second leading cause of death nationwide.

Yet in 2025, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at CDC — the home of the nation’s overdose, suicide and violence prevention work — lost more than 200 staff, including experts who work on suicide. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which funds the treatment and crisis intervention side of this work, lost more than half of its roughly 900 staff in 2025. Those cuts included people working on the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which has responded to more than 23 million contacts since its launch in 2022 and been shown to reduce suicide mortality among young people by 11 percent.

And here’s one of the most important — and least understood — facts about suicide prevention revealed by the National Violent Death Reporting System: Roughly half of Americans who die by suicide do not have a diagnosed mental health condition at the time of their death.

That means treatment alone can never be the whole answer. Suicide prevention has to happen in communities, workplaces, schools and families. It has to reach people in the moments we know are the highest risk, such as job loss, a relationship ending or a financial crisis. It has to involve teachers, coaches, community leaders, employers, peers and more.

This is exactly the kind of infrastructure that federal programs like Garrett Lee Smith Act grants for colleges and community-based organizations, which faced cuts in early 2026 that were ultimately reversed, are designed to support. The administration has also proposed cutting CDC’s Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Program by more than half in its fiscal year 2027 budget and eliminating the Adverse Childhood Experiences program entirely.

These programs don’t just treat people in crisis. They build conditions that prevent a crisis from occurring in the first place and build coping skills to respond to difficult circumstances. Now is not the time to pull back. Now is the time to double down — to treat this moment of progress not as a finish line, but as proof that these investments are working.

That’s why the administration needs to provide robust funding for CDC’s Injury Center and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, while maintaining their vital workforces. We also need a specialized workforce, targeted, culturally relevant programs and a robust data reporting system to meet those who are most at risk of suicide.

The families who have lost someone to suicide know what is at stake. So do we.

Dr. Allison Arwady, MD, MPH, is the former director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Chicago Department of Health. Dr. Nadine Gracia, MD, MSCE, is president and CEO of Trust for America’s Health and the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health and Director of the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.