Risk Factors Associated With Suicide in Current and Former US Military Personnel

Abstract

Beginning in 2005, the incidence of suicide deaths in the US military began to sharply increase. Unique stressors, such as combat deployments, have been assumed to underlie the increasing incidence. Previous military suicide studies, however, have relied on case series and cross-sectional investigations and have not linked data during service with postservice periods. OBJECTIVE To prospectively identify and quantify risk factors associated with suicide in current and former US military personnel including demographic, military, mental health, behavioral, and deployment characteristics.

Usual Primary Care Provider Characteristics of a Patient-Centered Medical Home and Mental Health Service Use

“…4,5 Consequently, mental health disorders are often associated with disruptions in relationships, education, and employment, as well as lost productivity, poor health outcomes, increased risk of suicide, and premature mortality. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Primary care is often the first place for treatment of mental disorders, 13 and this is expected to increase with promulgation of the integrated care approach established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 14 Primary care providers (PCPs) are increasingly charged with screening, diagnosing, treating, and referring patients for treatment of mental health disorders.…”

Correlates of Suicide Among Veterans Treated in Primary Care: Case–Control Study of a Nationally Representative Sample

“…Little information is available in the literature describing the characteristics of veterans who see primary care clinicians and subsequently die by suicide. Prior studies have been limited to one state, 5 examined suicidal ideation rather than suicide, 6,7 synthesized data pre-dating recent VA suicide prevention initiatives, 8 or focused on particular mental health populations 9,10 or on patients referred from primary care. group of control patients who received care over the same time period from the same clinicians.…”

Contrasting the Impacts of Combat and Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief Missions on the Mental Health of Military Service Members

“…We use a Cox proportional hazard model with the person-quarter as the unit of analysis, as it allows us to explicitly model time-since-exposure and thus can capture how risks might change over time (LeardMann et al 2013;Reger et al 2015;Shen, Cunha, and Williams 2016). The hazard rate that Marine i was diagnosed with PTSD in quarter t given that he was not diagnosed prior to a given quarter is described by the function…”

“…A wealth of empirical studies have documented significant mental health problems and suicide deaths among service members who have returned from OEF/OIF missions (for PTSD, see Hoge, Auchterlonie, and Milliken (2006), Seal et al (2007), and Tanielian and Jaycox (2008); for suicide, see Ramchand, Acosta, and Burns (2011);LeardMann et al (2013), Reger et al (2015), Shen, Cunha, and Williams (2016)). Many studies use convenience samples, without a control group, and compare mental health rates before and after an OEF/OIF mission.…”