# Building Resources for the Diversification of Genetic Data on Suicide Death

> **NIH NIH R01** · UTAH STATE HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM--UNIVERSITY OF UTAH · 2024 · $422,316

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Suicide results in >800,000 world deaths and >40,000 U.S. deaths annually. Suicide rates in India, rising over
the past five decades, now reflect the highest rates in the world. India's contribution to global suicide deaths
increased from 25.3% in 1990 to 36.6% in 2016 among women, and from 18.7% to 24.3% among men.
Moreover, the suicide rate among girls and women in India continues to be twice the global rate. Yet while
several environmental and genetic risk factors for suicide have been identified globally, India remains
completely unrepresented in global research efforts. More broadly, a lack of population-based data from under-
represented populations greatly limits the impact and global generalizability of genetic and epidemiological
studies of suicide death. There are, in particular, myriad cultural and environmental factors that are expected to
dynamically influence risk for suicide in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs). Four in five suicides in young
people (<30 years) globally occur in LMICs, and a better understanding of suicide in LMICs will be critical for
designing stigma reduction initiatives and informing prevention efforts. Genetic analysis of population-based
suicide death in Utah has dramatically informed models of risk in the U.S., where a majority of deaths lack
psychiatric or other medical records, but have been profiled for hundreds of polygenic risks.
 This project aims to 1) collect blood, phenotypic information, psychological autopsy, and toxicology data
from 4,000 suicide deaths and postmortem controls in Delhi, India, 2) to collect brain tissue from multiple areas
of the brain in half of the suicide deaths and controls (n = 2,000), 3) to genotype all blood samples, and 4) to
conduct multiple cross-ancestry analyses of genetic and phenotypic risks, as well as the first (preliminary)
genome-wide association study (GWAS) of population-based suicide death in a non-European ancestry
population. Genetic data from India will be integrated with U.S. data, meta-analyzed with the U.S. suicide death
GWAS, and meta-analyzed with 22 international suicide attempt GWAS from the Psychiatric Genomics
Consortium (PGC). Brain samples will be preserved at the All-India Institute for Medical Sciences in Delhi, for
future methylation and sequencing analysis with teams across India and the U.S. This biosample collection will
represent the only other resource for population-based suicide death in the world, after Utah, and as a diverse
ancestry cohort with psychological autopsy, blood, and brain tissue, it stands to significantly impact global
suicide research.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10741348
- **Project number:** 1R01MH134284-01
- **Recipient organization:** UTAH STATE HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM--UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
- **Principal Investigator:** Chittaranjan Behera
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $422,316
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-05-15 → 2029-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10741348

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10741348, Building Resources for the Diversification of Genetic Data on Suicide Death (1R01MH134284-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10741348. Licensed CC0.

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