Figure 3. Age of Onset of Lifetime Suicide Attempt Among Blacks by Ethnicity and Sex (n=5002).

These smoothed hazard functions describe the ways in which the risk of first suicide attempt changes with time for the 4 sex-by-ethnicity groups. As in Figure 1, the greatest risk generally occurs during the teenage years to the mid-twenties. African American men are at notably lower risk of making an attempt than the other 3 groups until their mid-20s and actually become the group most at risk after approximately age 34 years. Caribbean black men are most at risk up to this age.