Former American military personnel are twice as likely to kill themselves as people who have not seen combat, reports a study in the July issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Most previous studies on U.S. veteran suicide focused on patients of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and/or on those who served during the Vietnam War era. Little had been known about the risk of suicide among men who had served in the Second World War, the Vietnam war, the Korean War and the Gulf War.
Researchers led by Mark Kaplan, of Portland State University in Oregon, followed 320,890 men aged over 18 years for 12 years who had served in the armed forces at some time between 1917 and 1994.
They found that the rate of suicide among men who had been in military service was 2.13 times higher than those who had never served in the armed forces.
The risk was highest in veterans who could not participate fully in home, work or leisure activities because of a health problem.
Veterans who killed themselves were also more likely to be older, white, better educated and less likely to have never been married than other suicides. Interestingly, former soldiers who were overweight were far less likely to kill themselves than those of a healthy weight.
The researchers found that veterans were 58 per cent more likely to use a gun to kill themselves than other suicides.
A tour of duty in the military did not increase the risk of dying from natural or accidental causes. Nor did it make one more likely to be a homicide victim.
Although the research did not include data from men returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, the authors said the findings had strong implications for them.
Data were obtained from the US National Health Interview Surveys 1986-94 and linked to the Multiple Cause of Death file (1986-97) through the National Death Index.
