September has been designated National Suicide Prevention Month by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The VA has a new public service announcement, "The Power of 1," designed to reinforce the message that small, everyday actions can play a pivotal role in improving a veteran's life. In addition, a Suicide Prevention Month Web page offers interactive tools to learn about the Veterans Crisis Line.
One study may offer a clue to improving prevention strategies. A study of Israeli military personnel found that 38.3 percent of those who committed suicide contacted a primary care physician within the month before their death, compared with only 27.6 percent who contacted a mental health provider during their entire military service.
The results suggest that primary care physicians could do a better job of recognizing suicidal tendencies among members of the military and begin the process of intervening.
The study was published online in August by the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
The suicide rate in the general U.S. population once outpaced that of military personnel. But that has been reversed in the past 10 years, with a dramatic increase in suicide rates among American servicemen and women. The Star Tribune examined the rise in military suicides in a series of articles in 2011.
The recent study looked at 170 active-duty males in the Israel Defense Forces from 2002 to 2012 who went on to die by suicide and 500 active-duty males who did not (the control group).
While 28 percent of active-duty males who later died of suicide saw a mental health care professional within the month before death compared with 14 percent for the control group, they were even more likely to see a non-mental-health professional, like a primary care physician, the study found.
