Suicide is a phenomenon that is, historically, dominated by men. Male suicide rates, on average, are
four times as high as female suicide rates. A
new study has been published on psychiatryonline looking at suicide rates amongst veterans between 2000-2010.
The findings are staggering.
The rates are highest among young veterans, the VA found in new research compiling 11 years of data. For women ages 18 to 29, veterans kill themselves at nearly 12 times the rate of nonveterans.
In every other age group, including women who served as far back as the 1950s, the veteran rates are between four and eight times higher, indicating that the causes extend far beyond the psychological effects of the recent wars.
[bold my emphasis]
What those causes are exactly have yet to be tested and determined but one candidate is sexual assault. The LA Times article, referenced just above, uses the distressing story of Navy veteran Katie Lynn Cesena who shot herself in 2011.
First, she had reported being raped by a fellow service member. The Pentagon has estimated that 10% of women in the military have been raped while serving and another 13% subject to unwanted sexual contact, a deep-rooted problem that has gained attention in recent years as more victims come forward.
The distress forced Cesena out of the Navy, said her mother, Laurie Reaves.
She said her daughter was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression at the VA Medical Center in San Diego and lived in fear of her purported rapist — who was never prosecuted — and his friends.
She had begun writing a memoir that would, amongst other things, discuss her assault—but sadly she did not finish it.
Another factor may very well be the type of individual who joins the military in the modern era:
Female service members have always been volunteers, and their elevated suicide rates across all generations may be part of a larger pattern. Male veterans 50 and older — the vast majority of whom served during the draft era, which ended in 1973 — had roughly the same suicide rates as nonveteran men their age. Only younger male veterans, who served in the all-volunteer force, had rates that exceeded those of other men.
Another, smaller but significant factor may be the choice of suicide method:
In the general population, women attempt suicide more often than men but succeed less because women usually use pills or other methods that are less lethal than firearms. Female veterans, however, are more likely than other women to have guns, government surveys have shown.
In the new data, VA researchers found that 40% of the female veterans who committed suicide used guns, compared with 34% of other women — enough of a difference to have a small effect on the rates.
One clearly important discovery in this research is that the suicide rates amongst veterans utilizing support systems at the Veterans Health Administration were significantly lower than those who were not getting help.