Medically Documented Suicide Ideation Among U.S. Army Soldiers

Abstract

We used administrative data to examine predictors of medically documented suicide ideation (SI) among Regular Army soldiers from 2006 through 2009 (N = 10,466 ideators, 124,959 control person-months). Enlisted ideators (97.8% of all cases) were more likely than controls to be female, younger, older when entering service, less educated, never or previously deployed, and have a recent mental health diagnosis. Officer ideators were more likely than controls to be female, younger, younger when entering service, never married, and have a recent mental health diagnosis. Risk among enlisted soldiers peaked in the second month of service and declined steadily, whereas risk among officers remained relatively stable over time. Risk of SI is highest among enlisted soldiers early in Army service, females, and those with a recent mental health diagnosis.

Figure 1. Risk of Suicide Ideation among Enlisted Soldiers and Officers by Month Since Entering the Army¹

¹The sample of enlisted soldiers (n=10,232 cases, 104,369 control person-months) and officers (n=234 cases, 20,590 control person-months) is from the Army STARRS Historical Administrative Data Study (HADS). It includes all Regular Army soldiers (i.e., excluding those in the U.S. Army National Guard and Army Reserve) with suicide ideation in their administrative records during the years 2006-2009, plus a 1:200 stratified probability sample of all other active duty Regular Army person-months in the population exclusive of soldiers with suicide ideation or other non-fatal suicidal event (e.g., suicide attempt) and person-months in which the soldier died (i.e., suicides, combat deaths, homicides, and deaths due to other injuries or illnesses). All records in the 1:200 sample were assigned a weight of 200 to adjust for the under-sampling of months not associated with suicide ideation.