COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
Male U.S. veterans have higher suicide risk -study
Will Dunham, Reuters
June 11, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) - Male U.S. veterans are twice aslikely to die by suicide than people with no military service, and
are more likely to kill themselves with a gun than others who commit
suicide, researchers said on Monday.
The findings indicate that doctors and others who may treat U.S.
troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan should be alert for signs
of depression and suicidal tendencies, said lead researcher Mark
Kaplan of Portland State University in Oregon.
The study tracked 320,890 U.S. men, about a third of whom served in
the U.S. military between 1917 and 1994. The rest had no military background.
Those with military service committed suicide at a rate 2.13 times
higher than the other men, but did not have a higher risk of dying
from disease, accidental causes or murder, the study found.
"This is identifying a problem that deserves more attention," Kaplan
said in a telephone interview.
Of the veterans, about 29 percent served in the Vietnam War, 28
percent in World War Two, 16 percent in the Korean War and the rest
in other conflicts up through the 1991 Gulf War.
The veterans were 58 percent more likely to have used a firearm to
kill themselves than non-veterans who committed suicide. Kaplan said
studies show that veterans are more likely to own guns than the rest
of the population.
The study was not designed to look at the causes of the higher
suicide rate, but veterans, particularly those who saw combat, are at
higher risk for mental conditions such as post-traumatic stress
disorder as well as battle wounds that can cause disabilities.
The research was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Kaplan said because of improvements in medicine since earlier wars,
some troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived wounds that
may have been fatal in previous conflicts, but have serious physical
and mental disabilities that may put them at higher suicide risk.
'THIS WILL PERSIST'
"I don't see anything out there that really bodes well for a decline
in the risk for suicide. I think that this will persist," Kaplan said.
Those who committed suicide were more likely to have been white,
better educated and older than the other men, the researchers found.
The most acute risk was among veterans with some sort of a health
problem that made them unable to participate fully in home, work or
leisure activities.
Overweight veterans were less likely to have committed suicide than
veterans of normal weight, the study said.
The researchers said unlike some previous studies on suicides among
U.S. military veterans, theirs did not focus on Vietnam War-era
veterans or veterans who get health care through the Department of
Veterans Affairs system. They said three-quarters of veterans do not
receive health care through VA facilities.
"Regardless of when an individual served in the military, they are at
an elevated risk," Kaplan said.
Kaplan said he and fellow researchers Nathalie Huguet, Bentson
McFarland and Jason Newsom did not look at suicide among women
veterans because there were so few suicide deaths among the group in
the data they analyzed.
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