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- By Elyse Wild
Newly published data from New Mexico shows a promising drop in deaths by suicide among the state’s Native American population.
The state saw a 43% decrease in Native American suicide rates from 2022 to 2023, according to the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) Center for Health Protection. The decline outpaced the state’s overall 9% reduction in suicide rates during the same period. The decreases could reflect the success of tribal and state-level initiatives, including culturally appropriate mental health care programs.
“Tribal communities are reclaiming their narrative from a strength-based perspective,” Dr. Diedre Yellowhair (Diné), an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, told Native News Online. “So often, the data tells a different story about disparities. I think we’re seeing the data starting to shift as we talk more about the strength and the resilience within communities and how vibrant and rich cultures, traditions and languages are, and how all of that adds to overall life improvement.”
Deidre Yellowhair. (photo/UNM)According to the Centers for Disease Control, American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) experience suicide rates 91% higher than the general population. In New Mexico, home to 23 federally recognized tribes, suicide rates among the Indigenous population climbed nearly 56% from 2009-2018.
These elevated rates stem from systemic abuses Native communities have faced for generations. Genocide, forced assimilation, and broken treaty promises have left tribal nations with significant health disparities and limited infrastructure.
“Lack of culturally appropriate resources that really speak to community members, intergenerational families members — those things feed into some of the suicide rates,” Yellowhair said. “Of course, all of that is very systemic, and there is an overall lack of resources.”
In 2011, following several suicide clusters — deaths by suicide that occur in a community in a short span of time — involving Native youth, New Mexico passed a set of bills to create a clearinghouse of culturally-centered Native American suicide prevention resources. The program, housed at UNM and called “Honoring Native Life,” coordinates efforts across tribes, facilitates data agreements and collection, grant writing partnerships and capacity building. By working with tribal leadership and community members, the program’s resources can be tailored to each tribe’s distinct cultural needs.
“I think [the data] shows an acknowledgment that tribal and cultural ways are also medicine,” Yellowhair said. “They're healing. There's this idea that Westernized frameworks of health and wellness are the only answer for every population is misguided.”
In 2022, the state launched 988, a crisis support line. That same year, it held a tribal symposium on the 988 system and, in collaboration with Honoring Native Life, created culturally appropriate promotion materials for the crisis line.
“988 has been tremendous here in New Mexico as a way to respond culturally to mental health, behavioral health emergencies,” Yellowhair said.
The improved statistics may also reflect increased willingness in Native communities to talk about mental health and suicide, topics that are often culturally taboo. Reframing suicide in a cultural context can open discussions that may otherwise not occur.
“As Native people, we learn that death is a natural cycle in the life process,” Yellowhair said. “We expect to journey on when we reach old age. Suicide is a disruption of that — it’s an unexpected and unnatural to the life cycle.”
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