Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Mar;102 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S154-9.
doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300409. Epub 2012 Jan 25.

Veterans and suicide: a reexamination of the National Death Index-linked National Health Interview Survey

Matthew Miller  1 , Catherine Barber, Melissa Young, Deborah Azrael, Kenneth Mukamal, Elizabeth Lawler
Affiliations

Veterans and suicide: a reexamination of the National Death Index-linked National Health Interview Survey

Matthew Miller et al. Am J Public Health. 2012 Mar.

Abstract

Objectives: We assessed the risk of suicide among veterans compared with nonveterans.

Methods: Cox proportional hazards models estimated the relative risk of suicide, by self-reported veteran status, among 500,822 adult male participants in the National Death Index (NDI)-linked National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), a nationally representative cohort study.

Results: A total of 482 male veterans died by suicide during 1,837,886 person-years of follow-up (76% by firearm); 835 male nonveterans died by suicide during 4,438,515 person-years of follow-up (62% by firearm). Crude suicide rates for veterans and nonveterans were, respectively, 26.2 and 18.8 per 100,000 person-years. The risk of suicide was not significantly higher among veterans, compared with nonveterans, after adjustment for differences in age, race, and survey year (hazard ratio = 1.11; 95% confidence interval = 0.96, 1.29).

Conclusions: Consistent with most studies of suicide risk among veterans of conflicts before Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom, but in contrast to a previous study using the NDI-linked NHIS data, we found that male veterans responding to the NHIS were modestly, but not significantly, at higher risk for suicide compared with male nonveterans.

PubMed Disclaimer

Comment in

  • Is the rate of suicide among veterans elevated?
    Gibbons RD, Brown CH, Hur K. Gibbons RD, et al. Am J Public Health. 2012 Mar;102 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S17-9. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300491. Epub 2012 Jan 25. Am J Public Health. 2012. PMID: 22390592 Free PMC article. No abstract available.

References

    1. US Department of Veterans Affairs. Report of the Blue Ribbon Work Group on Suicide Prevention in the Veteran Population. Washington, DC: Department of Veteran Affairs; 2008.
    1. Kaplan MS, Huguet N, McFarland BH, Newsom JT. Suicide among male veterans: a prospective population-based study. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2007;61(7):619–624 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Boehmer TK, Flanders WD, McGeehin MA, Boyle C, Barrett DH. Postservice mortality in Vietnam veterans: 30-year follow-up. Arch Intern Med. 2004;164(17):1908–1916 - PubMed
    1. Bullman TA, Kang HK. The risk of suicide among wounded Vietnam veterans. Am J Public Health. 1996;86(5):662–667 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kang HK, Bullman TA. Mortality among US veterans of the Persian Gulf War. N Engl J Med. 1996;335(20):1498–1504 - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources