Unit costs are the economic cost per suicide and per attempt by type of cost (i.e., direct or indirect). We began with the latest peer‐reviewed, comprehensive analysis of costs of medical and indirect costs by age category and gender (Corso et al., 2007) and then applied a series of updates and refinements. We first updated medical costs per death and per attempt to national estimates for 2007 based on the increase in per capita health expenditures from 2000 to 2007 (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2015). More comprehensive than an inflation adjustment, this process also adjusted for the change in patterns of medical care, such as new technologies and more intensive use of existing technology, which also contributed to higher medical costs. Second, we updated indirect costs per death to 2007 based on the change in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) (World Bank, 2015a). This adjustment incorporated not only inflation, but also increases in earnings due to higher productivity. Third, we incorporated variability among states in per capita health care expenditures and income to reflect state‐to‐state differences in
