Replication Data for: Cross-level Sociodemographic Homogeneity Alters Individual Risk For Completed Suicide

Among deaths of despair, the individual and community correlates of US suicides have been consistently identified and are well-known. Yet, the suicide rate has been stubbornly unyielding to reduction efforts, promoting calls for novel research directions. Linking levels of influence have been proposed in theory but blocked by data limitations in the U.S. Guided by theories on the importance of connectedness and responding to unique data challenges of low base rates, geographical dispersion, and appropriate comparison groups, we attempt the first harmonization of data from the National Violence Data Reporting System (NVDRS) and the American Community Survey (ACS) to match individual-county level risks. We theorize cross-level socio-demographic homogeneity between individuals and communities, or “sameness”, focusing on whether having like-others in the community moderates known individual suicide risks. While analyses from this new Multi-level Suicide Data for the US (MSD-US) replicate several individual and contextual findings, considering sameness changes usual understandings of risk in two critical ways. First, the high individual risk for suicide among those who are unemployed, younger, not US born, widowed or married, unemployed, or have physical disabilities is cut substantially with greater sameness. Second, this moderating pattern flips for Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Asians and Hispanics, as well as among native-born and unmarried individuals, where low individual suicide risk increases significantly in places of greater similarity. Results mark the joint influence of social structure and culture, deliver unique insights on the complexity of connectedness in suicide, and offer novel considerations for policy and practice.