Study: Female Vets Especially Vulnerable To Suicide

[roxiejules]

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/04/131797071/study-female-vets-especially-vulnerable-to-suicide - NPR

The journal Psychiatric Services published this week the first large-scale study of suicide among female veterans. To do the study, Portland State University researcher Mark Kaplan collected information about all the female deaths by suicide in 16 states.

He then compared the rate of suicide among female veterans to the rate of suicide among female civilians, and found that in general female vets are much more likely to commit suicide than their civilian peers, especially, Kaplan says, younger vets.

"Female veterans — age 18 to 34 — are three times as likely as their civilian peers to die by suicide," he said.

Kemp, the director of the Suicide Hotline, agrees with Kaplan. And though she says the underlying problems of adjustment and PTSD are similar for both men and women, there are some differences. Many of the women who call her hotline, she says, are struggling to deal with military rapes they experienced during their deployments. And the women who call, Kemp says, talk much more about their children.

[LiberalLoner]

1. Wow. This kind of hits home. n/t

[pscot]

2. That's sad

[Igel]

3. Which raises the question. . .

Is the increase in vets' suicides the result of an increased number of women in the military having been exposed to wartime duty?

(Point: The average suicide rate has increased. It's easy for an increase in the average rate to be the result of an increase in every subgroup's rate, but at least as likely that it'll reflect a larger increase in a particular subgroup's rate; alternatively consistent subgroup rates but a change in the demographics can have the same effect. For example, my local high school was ecstatic at finally receiving an "acceptable" rating; that every subgroup's achievement score stayed rock steady wasn't important, the claim was that the students had all increased their scores and that every student should be proud of this. The percentage of higher-achieving Latinos in the student body increased while the percentage of lower-achieving African-Americans decreased, and a minute's work with a calculator showed that this accounted perfectly for the increase in ratings.)

I've seen no general reporting on suicide rates for subgroups of veterans--lots of overall figures and a mess of tear-jerk anecdotes. If the increase can be accounted for by the women's component, then services need to be targeted and tailored to that subgroup; alternatively, this needs to be recalibrate the risk to the women for when they're assigned to a theatre of operations. If this doesn't account for it, then this also needs to be said.