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# Are Black Suicide Deaths Being Undercounted?
- URL: https://www.melaninblissmedia.com/are-black-suicide-deaths-being-undercounted/
- Published: 2026-10-29T20:21:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-29T20:21:43.000Z
- Description: A 2025 Maryland study found Black decedents were far more likely to be classified 'undetermined' than white decedents. MB is asking whether New York has the same gap.
- Author: Amber McClendon
- Tags: Black Mental Health, Health

Internal Draft — Not Yet Published. Pending reporting notes below.

What an “undetermined” manner-of-death ruling can hide — and why it matters for funding and policy.

## What the Data Shows

A 2025 peer-reviewed Maryland study found Black decedents were disproportionately classified as “undetermined” manner of death rather than suicide 83.0% versus 64.8% for white decedents in the study's examined sample — despite similar patient characteristics.

## What This Does and Doesn't Prove

This is one state's data, not a national audit. It is not proof that Black suicide deaths are undercounted everywhere. It is, however, a documented, peer-reviewed pattern that raises a legitimate accountability question about how manner-of-death decisions get made — and by whom.

## Why Classification Is Not a Technicality

A death coded “undetermined” instead of “suicide” can affect survivor benefits, life-insurance payouts, and — at the population level — whether a community's suicide risk ever shows up in the data that drives prevention funding. If a community's deaths are quietly miscoded, that community's crisis can look smaller on paper than it is.

## MB's Local Question

Is there a New York City or New York State parallel to Maryland's finding? MB is filing public-records requests with the NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner to ask how manner-of-death determinations are made and whether classification outcomes are tracked by race.

> CRISIS RESOURCES: If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) — 24/7, with Spanish-language and Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing access. BlackLine (1-800-604-5841) offers a crisis line for Black, Brown, Native, Muslim, and Black LGBTQI communities that does not involve law enforcement.

## Sources

\[1\] Racial disparities in manner-of-death classification (2025 study) — PubMed, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40768207/

\[2\] Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide — reportingonsuicide.org, https://reportingonsuicide.org

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