Soldiers Before Combat Most At Risk Of Military Suicides

Recently, mental health professionals found that military suicide rates are not necessarily due to combat.

Studying more than 163,000 soldiers showed the researchers that at the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Army soldiers most at the risk of suicide were those that never got deployed. Suicides were the highest among those that were only a couple of months into service.

Although the findings were surprising, they did not automatically indicate that deployment is protective and works against suicide.

"It is more likely that those who are not deployed are already at a higher risk for suicide, and that is one of the reasons they were not cleared to deploy," said Alan Peterson, a military mental health researcher from the University of Texas who wasn't involved in the study.

Earlier suicide rates among soldiers were lower than among people in the general population, but in the wars of the last 15 years, the rates have shot up.

"Suicide rates in the army have traditionally been about half of those in a similar civilian population," said Robert Ursano from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and lead author of the study. "During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rates increased and surpassed those of civilians. They have remained high."

Examining soldiers attempting suicide between 2004 and 2009, Ursano's team found that the 9,650 soldiers in the sample could be separated into three groups---those that were deployed recently, those who got deployed earlier and those who were never deployed.

Results showed that those who were never deployed, along with women, were more than three times as likely to commit suicide than the other groups. Moreover, soldiers in the first two years of service and those who got a mental health diagnosis in the previous month were at high risk.

Worryingly, in spite of the study showing those who were never deployed totalling upto 40 percent of all the soldiers involved in the study, they made up 61 percent of those who committed suicide.

"During deployment, when the enemy is trying to kill you, the natural human reaction is one of self-preservation," Peterson said. "This may help explain some of the reduced risks for suicide during deployments."

After deployment, the risk to the soldiers shoots up in the fifth month after their return.

"Service members have more time to think about their deployment experiences," Peterson said. "Those with PTSD, depression, substance-use disorders and guilt and shame related to deployment are at increased risk for suicide."

"Our goal is to identify who, when and where people are at risk," Ursano said. "This provides helpful information on which groups to develop interventions for as well as possible mechanisms [that] increase risk."

The findings were published in the May 25 issue of JAMA Psychiatry.