A suicide-specific diagnosis: The case for

Suicide has been and continues to be a major concern, accounting for over 700,000 deaths worldwide in 2019 and being the fourth leading cause of death among people aged 15–29 (World Health Organization, 2021). In the United States, nearly 48,000 people died from suicide in 2019 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). Additionally, the US national suicide rate steadily increased from 1999 to 2019 (Hedegaard et al., 2021). To address this serious public health issue, an increasing number of experts in the field have argued for inclusion of a suicide-specific diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) to improve suicide risk assessment and prevention (Fehling & Selby, 2021; Oquendo et al., 2008; Rogers et al., 2019; Sisti et al., 2020; Voros et al., 2021).