US veterans have increased risk of suicide
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Male US military service veterans are more than twice as likely to commit suicide compared with their peers who never served in the armed forces, a new study shows.
And veterans with some type of disability were at particularly high risk of killing themselves, Dr. Mark S. Kaplan of Portland State University in Oregon and colleagues found.
Because many veterans are returning from the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan with physical or mental disabilities, healthcare providers must be aware of the heightened suicide risk these individuals face, Kaplan and his team caution.
“There’s a growing recognition that this is an issue and will continue to be an issue,” he told Reuters Health in an interview.
Kaplan and his colleagues looked at data for 320,890 men who participated in the US National Health Interview Surveys between 1986 and 1994, and again 12 years later. While the group included veterans from the World War I through the first Gulf War, not all of the ex-military men had seen conflict.
About 16 percent of the men in the sample were veterans, but veterans represented 31.1 percent of all suicide deaths. While the veterans were no more likely to die from natural causes or from homicides or accidents, they were 2.13 times more likely to kill themselves.
Former military men who committed suicide were 58 percent more likely to have used a gun compared with non-veteran suicides. Other factors associated with an increased risk of suicide were health problems that limited activities, 12 or more years of education, older age and white race.
Most studies to-date of suicide among veterans have focused on those seeking care through the Veterans Administration system, who represent “only a fraction” of the entire ex-military population, Kaplan and his colleagues point out in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The current study included both VA and non-VA participants, providing a more accurate picture of suicide risk in the general population of US veterans, they add.
Based on the findings, both VA and non-VA doctors caring for veterans need to be alert to signs that their patients may be contemplating suicide, and should ask these patients about their access to firearms, Kaplan said. “It is presently a male problem,” he added. “Clinicians need to be more attuned to the issues that men bring to clinics.”
SOURCE: Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, July 2007.
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