Publication year
2012
Citation Title
Characteristics of suicides among US Army active duty personnel in 17 US States from 2005 to 2007.
Journal Name
American Journal Of Public Health
Journal Volume
102
Issue Number
S1
Page Numbers
S40-S44
DOI
10.2105/AJPH.2011.300481
Summary
The authors of this study provided descriptive data for U.S. Army suicides that occurred from 2005 to 2007 in 17 U.S. states using two large scale surveillance systems: National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) and the Department of Defense Suicide Event Report (DoDSER).
Key Findings
Most decedents were White males, less than 30 years old, married, and in the enlisted ranks. Fifty-five percent of suicides were by firearm and 25% of incidents involved alcohol.
The most common health and stress-related circumstances preceding death were intimate partner problems (45%) and military-related stress (41%), with the latter including current job problems and combat experiences.
Many decedents showed symptoms of mental health distress; 36% communicated their intent to self-harm, 32% were identified as having a depressed mood, 32% had a recent crisis, and 23% received a mental health diagnosis.
Implications for Program Leaders
Provide a wide range of social support to Soldiers; might consider ways to encourage Veterans and their families to continue or begin to integrate new activities that build positive intimate partner relationships and increase coping skills to handle a variety of possibly stressful situations
Provide training and professional development to staff about the signs and risk factors for suicide as well as procedures for providing appropriate referral services
Disseminate information about the resources available to Service members and their families who are coping with mental health issues
Implications for Policy Makers
Continue to support large-scale, community-based suicide prevention efforts including awareness and prevention campaigns
Continue support for increasing awareness of and access to a wide variety of support services (including access to behavioral health services) for active duty Soldiers and Veterans should be sustained
Recommend education for professionals working with military families about the impact of deployment on children
Methods
Decedents were drawn from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) and the Department of Defense Suicide Event Report (DoDSER).
Cases were identified in the DoDSER database, then linked to NVDRS using incident variables (i.e., state and date of death) and decedent demographic variables (i.e., age, gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, Veteran status, and occupation).
Data were linked between these databases to comprehensively describe the characteristics of the decedents. Suicides occurred between 2005 and 2007 in 17 U.S. states.
Participants
The sample drawn from the linked database(s) was N = 56.
Most decedents were White males, less than 30 years old, married, and in the enlisted ranks.
The sample only included U.S. Army suicide decedents.
Limitations
Causality can not be established between the circumstances and the suicides; therefore, it is not known from the data if a preceding issue, like job-related stress, was the main cause of the suicide.
No self-report data from the decedents prior to their suicide were used (i.e., no knowledge of self-perceptions of these individuals on scales like mood, depression, etc.). This impacts the researcher’s ability to accurately gauge preceding events.
The sample consisted of only U.S. Army decedents and may not be generalizable to other branches of the military.
Avenues for Future Research
Replicate the findings from this study in additional states.
Examine causality between previous circumstances, suicide ideation, and suicide
Continue to explore the characteristics of suicide decedents across all service branches and components
Focus
Army
Target Population
Population Focus
Military Branch
Military Component
Abstract
Suicides are increasing among active duty US Army soldiers. To help focus prevention strategies, we characterized 56 US Army suicides that occurred from 2005 to 2007 in 17 US states using two large-scale surveillance systems. We found that intimate partner problems and military-related stress, particularly job stress, were common among decedents. Many decedents were also identified as having suicidal ideation, a sad or depressed mood, or a recent crisis before death. Focusing efforts to prevent these forms of stress might reduce suicides among soldiers.
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