Military and Suicide

[Shikima]

---

Members do not see this ad.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/new-...ers-who-deployed-to-iraq-afghanistan-1.337875

It found higher rates of suicide among those who served less than four years in the military, or did not leave military service with an honorable discharge.

 

[notdeadyet]

I can't access the article (I think I've viewed the allotted six already for the month), but I'm assuming this is based on the JAMA Psychiatry article?

The stats showed that those who left the military early had a 63% higher suicide rate than those who didn't. This makes sense. Folks who leave the military early during time of war are likely medical discharges or disciplinary discharges. A big component of the first category is mental illness, which obviously comes with a higher suicide risk. The latter is most often due to drug abuse, which also comes with a higher suicide risk.

One of the more interesting findings is that there was not a statistically significant suicide rate difference between those who deployed and those who did not. This supports one of the things that many of us in military mental health have observed: folks who deploy are typically the healthiest. Folks with behavioral health "flags" are often not allowed to deploy and those individuals likely have more suicide risk factors, which mitigate the higher suicide risk among those that do deploy.

The study is very limited though, because it doesn't control for the three things I'd be most interested: mental health status, combat exposure, and injuries. How does the suicide rate among deployed veterans with mental illness compare to non-deployed veterans with mental illness? What risk factor for suicide is combat experiences, particularly those leading to PTSD (most folks who deploy are not exposed to combat)? And what is the association for suicide with those with combat injuries (particularly TBIs).

Interesting study though. It just doesn't tell us that much. There has been a lot of press about military suicides, and the rates certainly rose dramatically after OEF/OIF started. But what most folks don't recognize is that for most of this time, even during the spike, the rate of military suicides was still less than that of civilian population. Military service has just traditionally been a protective factor. When military suicides (at least Army) were at a peak, they just broke higher than the rate of suicides in the general population.

 

[Shikima]

New study finds no elevated risk of suicide for servicemembers who deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan

A study of more than 3.9 million men and women who served in the military during the post-9/11 era found that deploying to a war zone did not result in an elevated risk of suicide.
Instead, it found higher rates of suicide among those who served less than four years in the military, or did not leave military service with an honorable discharge.
“There is sometimes an impression that anyone who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan is at risk of suicide, and the study shows that is not supported by the data,” said Mark Reger, a researcher based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., who is co-author of the study published Wednesday online in JAMA Psychiatry.
Suicides have been a major concern in the military during the post-9/11 years, with the rates in the Army and Marine Corps almost doubling during the past decade.
The study launched by the JBLM-based National Center for Telehealth and Technology covered military personnel who served between 2001 and 2007. It tracked suicides while they were in uniform and also was able to identify — through 2009 — how many suicides occurred after they left the military.
The study found that someone who served less than one year in the military before discharge had more than triple the risk of suicide than someone who served 20 or more years. It also found that servicemembers who did not receive an honorable discharge had a 21 percent higher risk of suicide than a servicemember who received an honorable discharge.
The study comes with an important caveat: Many servicemembers who deployed did not come under fire.
The researchers lacked the data to determine the numbers of military personnel in the study who were exposed to combat. The study does not try to draw any conclusions about whether military personnel involved in the traumatic events of the battlefield may have higher rates of suicide.
“Unfortunately in our data set we did not have combat-exposure data, so I can’t comment on that,” said Reger, who noted that servicemembers with high rates of combat exposure, combat injuries and who had adjustment problems after deployment all required additional study.
The researchers also noted their results differed from an Army study that looked only at suicides among active-duty Army personnel. That study did find elevated suicide risks among presently and previously deployed soldiers.