Qualité des preuves 4.75/5
Score d’évaluation en huit dimensions selon la grille de qualité . Chaque dimension notée de 1 à 5.
- D1 Ancrage des sources
- 5/5
- D2 Autorité des sources
- 5/5
- D3 Arithmétique
- 4/5
- D4 Incertitude
- 5/5
- D5 Portée
- 5/5
- D6 Prose
- 5/5
- D7 Honnêteté sur la perception
- 4/5
- D8 Complétude des réserves
- 5/5
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Perçu
La plupart des parents américains sous-estiment dramatiquement à quel point les tentatives de suicide sont fréquentes chez les adolescents. Quand le CDC rapporte qu'environ un lycéen sur dix a tenté de se suicider au cours de l'année écoulée, le chiffre fait l'effet d'un choc — les parents d'adolescents ont tendance à estimer quelque chose de plus proche de un sur cent ou un sur plusieurs centaines, en partie parce que les tentatives sont bien moins visibles que les décès et en partie parce que les ados qui font une tentative le disent rarement à leurs parents. Le cadrage culturel du suicide adolescent s'appuie fortement sur les suicides aboutis (articles de presse, assemblées scolaires après un décès), qui sont bien plus rares que les tentatives dans cette tranche d'âge. Cette asymétrie signifie que le modèle mental public est ancré sur le taux de décès (~7 pour 100 000 pour les 15-19 ans) plutôt que sur le taux de tentatives sur l'année écoulée (~9 500 pour 100 000 lycéens), un écart d'environ trois ordres de grandeur dans la mauvaise direction.
Estimation approximative : La plupart des parents estimeraient bien en dessous de 1 sur 100 par an ; le chiffre réel est d'environ 1 sur 10
Source : intuition éditoriale, sans sondage
Réel
~9,5 % des lycéens ont tenté de se suicider au cours de l'année écoulée (2023)
lycéens américains, grades 9-12 (YRBS 2023)
Voir le calcul
La YRBS 2023 rapporte une prévalence de tentatives sur l'année écoulée de 9,5 % chez les lycéens (grades 9-12). La NSDUH 2023 rapporte une prévalence de tentatives sur l'année écoulée de 3,3 % chez l'ensemble des adolescents de 12-17 ans. Le chiffre de la NSDUH est plus faible car il inclut des adolescents plus jeunes (12-13 ans) aux taux plus bas et utilise un entretien à domicile plutôt qu'une enquête scolaire anonyme. Pour une estimation cumulée « au moins une fois pendant l'adolescence », composer naïvement le taux de la NSDUH sur 6 ans (12-17 ans) donne 1 - (1 - 0,033)^6 = 0,183, mais cela surestime l'incidence cumulée car de nombreux adolescents auteurs de tentatives sont des récidivistes d'une année sur l'autre — les mêmes individus apparaissent dans plusieurs coupes transversales annuelles. À l'inverse, le taux de la NSDUH sous-dénombre probablement les auteurs de tentatives isolées en raison du biais de désirabilité sociale de l'entretien à domicile. Les deux biais se compensent partiellement. Nous utilisons 0,18 (~1 sur 6) comme estimation centrale de la probabilité qu'un adolescent américain tente de se suicider au moins une fois entre 12 et 17 ans. La portée est subgroup_lifetime car cela ne s'applique qu'à la fenêtre de l'adolescence, pas à toute la vie adulte.
Réserves : La YRBS et la NSDUH utilisent des méthodologies, des populations et des définiti…
La YRBS et la NSDUH utilisent des méthodologies, des populations et des définitions différentes, ce qui explique pourquoi leurs chiffres phares diffèrent (9,5 % contre 3,3 %). Aucune des deux enquêtes ne vérifie les tentatives autodéclarées par rapport aux dossiers médicaux — certaines « tentatives » déclarées pourraient être mieux classées comme automutilation non suicidaire (NSSI), et certaines tentatives authentiques ne sont pas signalées même dans des enquêtes anonymes. Le chiffre cumulé de l'adolescence (0,18) est une estimation, pas une quantité directement mesurée ; aucune enquête américaine ne suit la même cohorte d'adolescents de manière longitudinale avec une évaluation annuelle des tentatives, de sorte que la véritable incidence cumulée est incertaine. La YRBS 2023 a montré une amélioration modeste par rapport au pic de 2021 pour plusieurs indicateurs — le pourcentage d'étudiants ayant sérieusement envisagé de se suicider est passé de 22 % à 20 %, et les taux de tentatives des étudiants noirs sont passés de 14 % à 10 % — mais les niveaux restent historiquement élevés par rapport à la référence 2009-2013. Tous les chiffres sont autodéclarés et sujets au biais de rappel, aux effets de désirabilité sociale et à l'ambiguïté de définition de ce qui constitue une « tentative ».
Comment le risque varie
Le chiffre principal est une moyenne sur des situations très différentes. Voici comment la probabilité varie selon le scénario ou le contexte :
1 sur 7,7 · 13%
Past-year attempt rate, YRBS 2023
1 sur 17 · 6,0%
Past-year attempt rate, YRBS 2023
1 sur 5,1 · 20%
Past-year attempt rate, YRBS 2023
1 sur 3,9 · 26%
Past-year attempt rate, YRBS 2023
1 sur 10 · 10%
Past-year attempt rate, YRBS 2023; down from 14% in 2021
1 sur 17 · 6,0%
Past-year attempt rate, YRBS 2023
La longueur et la teinte de la barre classent ces scénarios les uns par rapport aux autres, pas par rapport à d'autres risques. Les probabilités exactes sont indiquées à côté de chacun.
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Décisions que ce risque éclaire
Choix qui dépendent de ce risque : comment on pèse le compromis.
Commencer à fumer adolescent
% regrettent ce choix
L'action domine
Regret d'action 36.0× plus élevé
Choisir le comparé
If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988, available 24/7. For LGBTQ+ youth, The Trevor Project offers dedicated support at 1-866-488-7386 or by texting START to 678-678.
About one in ten US high school students reported attempting suicide in the past year, according to the CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. That is not a typo, and it is not a fringe estimate from an advocacy group. It comes from the largest, longest-running, federally administered survey of adolescent health risk behaviors in the country — roughly 20,000 students, anonymous questionnaires, probability sampling, conducted biennially since 1991.
The number shocks most adults, which is itself informative. Parents, teachers, and policymakers tend to anchor on suicide deaths among teenagers (about 7 per 100,000 per year for ages 15-19), which are tragic but comparatively rare. Past-year attempts, at roughly 9,500 per 100,000 high school students, are orders of magnitude more common than deaths in this age group. The gap between the death rate that dominates the news cycle and the attempt rate that dominates the epidemiology is one of the largest perception gaps on this site.
What the surveys actually measure
The YRBS asks a simple question: “During the past 12 months, how many times did you actually attempt suicide?” In 2023, 9.5% of students answered at least once. A separate question about serious consideration (ideation) returned 20.4%, and 15.7% said they had made a plan. The cascade — ideation to plan to attempt — narrows at each step, but the funnel is wide at the top.
SAMHSA’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a household-interview survey covering ages 12-17, reports a lower past-year attempt rate of 3.3% for 2023. The discrepancy is not a contradiction. The NSDUH includes younger adolescents (12-13) with lower attempt rates, uses a non-anonymous household interview format that suppresses disclosure of sensitive behaviors, and defines its population differently. Both are nationally representative. The YRBS figure is the better-established benchmark for high school students specifically; the NSDUH is more useful for the broader 12-17 age window.
The demographic gradients are steep
Female high school students attempt at roughly twice the rate of males (13% vs 6%), a ratio that has been stable across multiple YRBS cycles. The gender paradox of suicide — girls attempt more often, boys die more often — holds in adolescence as clearly as in adulthood, driven largely by differences in method lethality.
LGBQ+ students reported a 19.7% past-year attempt rate in the 2023 YRBS, compared to 6% for heterosexual students — more than a threefold disparity. Transgender students reported 25.9%. These numbers are not artifacts of small samples or methodological quirks; the YRBS added sexual identity questions in 2015 and the disparity has been consistent across every cycle since. The Trevor Project’s 2024 survey of over 18,000 LGBTQ+ youth aged 13-24 corroborates the pattern, reporting a 12% past-year attempt rate (lower than the YRBS figure partly because it includes young adults 18-24 with lower rates).
Black students showed a past-year attempt rate of 10% in 2023, down from 14% in 2021 — a meaningful decline, though still elevated relative to the 2013 baseline. The trajectory for Black youth has been one of the most concerning in the data, with rates rising sharply from 2013 through 2021 before the partial reversal.
What “attempt” means (and does not mean)
The YRBS does not verify self-reported attempts against emergency department records or clinical assessments. Some fraction of what students report as a suicide attempt would be classified by clinicians as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) — the intent matters for clinical taxonomy, but both behaviors indicate serious distress. Conversely, some genuine attempts go unreported even on anonymous surveys. The net direction of these biases is debated, but the order of magnitude — roughly one in ten — is not seriously contested by the research community.
The cumulative picture
No US survey follows the same adolescents year over year to track how many ever attempt across the full teenage window. Compounding the NSDUH’s 3.3% annual rate across six years (ages 12-17) with an independence assumption yields roughly 18%, but many attempters are repeat attempters, and the independence assumption overstates cumulative incidence. The true “at least once during adolescence” figure is likely in the range of 12-25%, with 18% as a reasonable central estimate. That means something like one in six American teenagers will attempt suicide at least once before turning 18.
The comparison to completed suicide is instructive. The lifetime probability of dying by suicide for a US adult is about 1 in 121 (0.83%). The probability of attempting suicide during adolescence alone — a six-year window, not a full lifetime — is roughly 20 times higher. Attempts are the iceberg; deaths are the tip.
Trend context
The 2023 YRBS showed modest improvement from the 2021 survey on several indicators. Serious consideration of suicide fell from 22% to 20%, and the overall attempt rate was little changed, at 9.5% in 2023. For some subgroups — Black students, female students — specific indicators declined. These are genuinely encouraging movements, but they follow a decade of deterioration (the 2013 attempt rate was about 8%) and the current levels remain historically high. Whether the 2021-2023 stabilization represents a peak or a plateau is not yet clear.
Pour aller plus loin
1 adolescent sur 6 tentera de se suicider. Les probabilites de mourir dans une fusillade de masse sont 1 sur 110 000. Les ecoles font des exercices de confinement pour la menace rare et passent a cote de la courante assise en classe.
Environ 1 adolescent americain sur 6 tentera de se suicider. Les probabilites sur une vie de mourir dans un attentat terroriste sont ~1 sur 3 500 000. L'un recoit des budgets securitaires ; l'autre des lignes telephoniques sous-financees.
Registre des sources
Chaque chiffre ci-dessous correspond à ce que la source a rapporté, avec la citation textuelle sur laquelle nous nous sommes appuyés et la méthode de calcul. Cliquez sur un lien pour vérifier directement.
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[1] CDC MMWR Supplements (Ivey-Stephenson et al.) — Mental Health and Suicide Risk Among High School Students and Protective Factors — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023
Mental Health and Suicide Risk Among High School Students and Protective Factors — Youth Risk Behavior Survey, United States, 2023- Statistique
9.5% of US high school students attempted suicide in the past 12 months; 20.4% seriously considered it; 15.7% made a plan; female 13% vs male 6% attempted; LGBQ+ students 19.7% vs heterosexual 6% attempted; transgender students 25.9%- Extrait
“"Overall, 20.4% seriously considered attempting suicide, and 9.5% had attempted suicide... The prevalence of mental health and suicide risk indicators was high across all demographic groups; however, prevalence was highest among female students and LGBQ+ students." ”
- Données source de
- 2024-10-24
- Consulté le
- 2026-04-19 · copie archivée
- Calcul
- The YRBS is a nationally representative, school-based, anonymous survey of US high school students conducted biennially by the CDC since 1991. In 2023, the survey captured approximately 20,000 students across grades 9-12. The 9.5% past-year attempt prevalence is the primary native rate. By sex: female students 13%, male students 6% (approximate 2:1 ratio). By sexual identity: LGBQ+ students 19.7%, heterosexual students 6% (approximate 3.3:1 ratio). Transgender students 25.9%, cisgender females 11.0%, cisgender males 5.3%. By race: Black students 10% (down from 14% in 2021), White students approximately 8%, Hispanic students approximately 10%. These are annual period-prevalence figures, not cumulative lifetime figures.
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[2] Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) — 2023 NSDUH Population Statistics Report: Adolescent Major Depressive Episodes and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors
2023 NSDUH Population Statistics Report: Adolescent Major Depressive Episodes and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors- Statistique
3.2 million adolescents aged 12-17 (12.3%) had serious thoughts of suicide in 2023; 856,000 (3.3%) attempted suicide; 4.5 million (18.1%) had a major depressive episode- Extrait
“"In 2023, among adolescents aged 12 to 17, 3.2 million (or 12.3 percent) had serious thoughts of suicide... nearly half of those who had serious thoughts of suicide made suicide plans or attempted suicide, or both." ”
- Données source de
- 2024-08-01
- Consulté le
- 2026-04-19 · copie archivée
- Calcul
- NSDUH is a household-interview survey of approximately 70,000 persons aged 12+, conducted annually by SAMHSA. The 3.3% past-year attempt rate among 12-17 year-olds is lower than the YRBS 9.5% for several reasons: (1) NSDUH includes younger adolescents (12-13) with lower rates; (2) household interview format introduces social desirability bias (teen answers with parent potentially nearby); (3) the YRBS school-based anonymous questionnaire elicits higher self-report of sensitive behaviors. Both surveys are nationally representative. The NSDUH figure is used for the cumulative adolescence estimate because it covers the full 12-17 age range rather than the 14-18 high-school window.
- Indépendance
- Fully independent of the YRBS. Different sampling frame (household vs school), different survey instrument, different administering agency (SAMHSA vs CDC).
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[3] Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics, Shain et al. 2024) — Suicide and Suicide Risk in Adolescents
Suicide and Suicide Risk in Adolescents- Statistique
AAP clinical report summarising epidemiology, risk factors, and screening recommendations for adolescent suicidality; notes suicide as the second leading cause of death for 10- to 24-year-olds in the US and recommends pediatricians screen patients 12 years and older for suicide risk at least annually- Extrait
“"Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10- to 24-year-olds in the United States and is a global public health issue." ”
- Données source de
- 2024-01-01
- Consulté le
- 2026-04-19 · copie archivée
- Calcul
- The AAP clinical report provides the clinical and epidemiological framing for adolescent suicidality, opening with the fact that suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10- to 24-year-olds in the US. It corroborates the YRBS and NSDUH figures and recommends annual suicide-risk screening for patients 12 and older. The AAP report does not provide independent incidence data but synthesises the CDC and SAMHSA sources with clinical literature on risk factors, screening tools (PHQ-A, Columbia Protocol), and lethal means restriction. The body text compares the CDC YRBS past-year attempt prevalence (~9,500 per 100,000 high school students) against the CDC age-15-19 suicide death rate (~7 per 100,000), a comparison of a self-reported past-year attempt rate against an annual death rate rather than a clinical attempt-to-death case ratio.
- Indépendance
- Review article synthesising CDC and SAMHSA data with clinical literature. Not an independent data source for the headline prevalence figure.
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[4] The Trevor Project — 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People
2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People- Statistique
12% of LGBTQ+ youth aged 13-24 attempted suicide in the past year (2024 survey of 18,000+ respondents); 46% of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide- Extrait
“"More than one in ten LGBTQ+ young people attempted suicide in the past year." ”
- Données source de
- 2024-04-01
- Consulté le
- 2026-04-19 · copie archivée
- Calcul
- The Trevor Project survey is a large convenience sample (not probability-based) of LGBTQ+ youth aged 13-24 recruited online. The 12% past-year attempt rate is broadly consistent with the YRBS finding that 19.7% of LGBQ+ high school students attempted suicide — the Trevor Project figure is lower because it includes older youth (18-24) with lower attempt rates. The convenience-sample design may introduce selection bias in either direction. This source is included to document the LGBTQ+ disparity with the largest available sample, not as an independent prevalence estimate. The 50-state report released in March 2025 provided state-level breakdowns of these figures.
- Indépendance
- Fully independent of CDC YRBS and SAMHSA NSDUH. Different survey instrument, different sampling frame (online convenience sample of LGBTQ+ youth vs probability-based surveys of all youth).