Suicides in New Mexico rose 9% in 2024, state health department says

Suicides in New Mexico increased by 9% last year, bringing numbers up to pre-pandemic levels after a slight dip, according to a new report from the New Mexico Department of Health.

In 2024, there were 512 suicides in the state — 42 more than in 2023, NMDOH officials said.

“One life lost to suicide is too many,” said Clarie Miller, lead suicide prevention coordinator for NMDOH. “We could drop by 50% and we still have lives to save.”

The state saw a small downturn in suicides in 2022 and 2023, which Miller attributes in part to the rollout of the 988 mental health crisis line, but last year’s 9% increase “really took us back to our pretty consistent average,” she said.

New Mexico had the fifth-highest per capita suicide rate in the country in 2023, and has consistently ranked in the top five states for the last decade, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year, white New Mexicans had the highest suicide rate of 29.4 deaths per 100,000 people, the NMDOH found, followed by Native Americans at 26.2 deaths per 100,000 people. The Hispanic suicide rate in New Mexico has increased by 27% over the past 10 years, NMDOH officials said.

Firearms were involved in 60% of the suicides in the state, according to the data.

“While we see a reduction in one risk area, we tend to see an increase in another,” Miller said. “We know in New Mexico, there is not one solution that we can just roll out across the state, or we would have.”

Research indicates a correlation between economic uncertainty and an increased suicide rate, which may be a factor in the increase in New Mexico suicides, Miller said.

“I think it can be an attributing factor,” she said. “The temperature in our country and our at-risk communities that are even more at-risk now (is) extremely concerning, and we are taking every step … to be able to support these higher-risk categories that we know are being affected by the temperature in the country and administration.”

Crisis responders from Albuquerque Community Safety also noted an uptick in callers experiencing suicidal ideation. ACS spokesperson Jorge Hernandez reported an average of 203 callers a month with thoughts of suicide last year, compared to an average of 107 monthly in 2023, though Hernandez suspects 2023’s numbers may have been artificially low because the public didn’t yet know about ACS’s crisis line. So far in 2025, the upward trend has continued with a monthly average of 210 callers with suicidal ideation, he said.

When a caller reports feeling suicidal, ACS dispatches a crisis responder to their location, who will walk them through the experience and help them with a treatment plan, or take them to the hospital, depending on the situation’s severity.

“People losing their jobs, losing relationships, those are all things that we’ve come across (where) they feel like they’re at a point where they can no longer go on,” said Walter Adams, deputy director of field operations for ACS. “So I don’t think it’s just driven by one single (statistical) reason. I think it’s really situational, depending on that person’s circumstances.”

Adams said he encounters many different types of people reporting feeling suicidal.

“It doesn’t have a face, and it doesn’t discriminate,” he said.

Miller said the state has a similar crisis response team in Las Cruces and is working on developing programs for rural areas through funding from the New Mexico Behavioral Health Trust.

“We know the importance of crisis response, but it is extremely expensive,” Miller said.

No matter where a person lives, asking for help can be difficult, she said.

“Reaching out for mental health support, taking that first step, it can be just as hard in an urban area as it is to find access in rural areas, because of the stigma.”