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Recent release from prison is a significant risk factor for suicide
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Inmates released from prison are nine times more likely to commit suicide in the next year than people who have never been incarcerated, new research shows.
"Suicide prevention efforts should focus on people who have spent at least one night in jail in the past year," concluded a team led by Ted Miller, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Research and Evaluation in Beltsville, Maryland.
For the study, researchers pooled data from 10 different studies of mortality rates among formerly incarcerated adults. They used that data to estimate suicide rates among the nearly 7.1 million adults who were released from prison at least once in 2019.
Researchers found that former prisoners were nine times more likely to die by suicide within one year of release and seven times more likely to die by suicide within two years of release. People recently released from prison account for approximately 20% of all adult suicides, despite making up only about 3% of the adult population.
Researchers noted that adults are often arrested during a mental health crisis.
It is now possible for health systems to link prison release data to patients' medical records, allowing them to target efforts to patients who have recently been released, the researchers noted.
"Focused suicide prevention efforts could reach a significant number of adults who were previously incarcerated during the two years when the likelihood of dying by suicide is highest," the researchers concluded in a press release from the American Psychiatric Association.
The results of the work are described in detail in an article published in the journal JAMA Network Open.