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Loreben Tuquero
By Loreben Tuquero November 8, 2024

World Health Organization did not produce suicide count after Trump’s victory

If Your Time is short

  • The World Health Organization, which was cited as this claim’s source, said the claim is not correct. It has no daily suicide tracker.

  • There is no evidence that this data is accurate.

Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 (or 800-273-8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

Former President Donald Trump has been named president-elect following the Nov. 5 election. The decisive win in a deeply politically divided country fueled celebration on the right and expressions of despair on the left.

But some social media users claimed scores of people were taking the news especially hard: "2,038 suicides have been reported today following Donald Trump’s election win," a Nov. 7 Instagram post read.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

We saw this claim posted Nov. 6 on X by "Dom Lucre," an account that has spread misinformation before. The user attached a photo attributing the data to the World Health Organization’s program for suicide prevention. 

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In an email, the World Health Organization told PolitiFact the claim is incorrect, and that it has no daily suicide tracker. The agency said it tracks mortality data by compiling annual mortality data reports from member states’ civil registration and vital statistics systems.

The latest data in the World Health Organization’s Mortality Database for deaths from self-inflicted injuries in the U.S. is from 2021. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest data for suicides is from May 2024. It reported the following provisional figures:

CDC reports provisional data based on "death certificate data received, but not yet fully reviewed." According to the CDC, as of 2022, one person dies in the United States by suicide every 11 minutes, or around 130 a day.

In a follow-up X post, "Dom Lucre" said the statistic came from worldometers.info. When PolitiFact visited the page Nov. 8, we saw the number of "suicides today" incrementally increasing from 1,560 to 1,848 in around two and a half hours. Worldometer attributed this supposed data to a WHO page that cannot be found. It specified no location or demographic for this data.

Claims that 2,038 suicides were reported Nov. 6 after Trump’s election win are baseless. We rate that False.

Our Sources

Email exchange, World Health Organization media relations, Nov. 8, 2024

Instagram post (archived), Nov. 7, 2024

Instagram post (archived), Nov. 7, 2024

X post by Dom Lucre, Nov. 6, 2024

WHO Mortality Database, Self-inflicted injuries, accessed Nov. 8, 2024

CDC WONDER, accessed Nov. 8, 2024

CDC, Fatal Injury Trends, accessed Nov. 8, 2024

CDC, Suicide Data and Statistics, accessed Nov. 8, 2024

Worldometer, accessed Nov. 8, 2024

PolitiFact, No, Michelle Obama isn’t running for president as a man, April 19, 2024

PolitiFact, The devil’s in the details: Viral Donald Trump Time cover is edited, May 1, 2024

PolitiFact, No evidence links Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s death to Secret Service oversight, Trump rally shooting, July 24, 2024

WHO page, accessed Nov. 8, 2024

Lead Stories, Fact Check: NO Evidence 2,000+ Suicides Were Reported in US -- Or Globally -- On November 6, 2024, Nov. 7, 2024

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World Health Organization did not produce suicide count after Trump’s victory

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