A new emergency room intervention tested among suicidal military veterans was associated with about half the odds they would engage in suicidal behavior, defined as “any action that could cause a person to die,” in a six-month follow-up period as compared with the usual care, according to a July 2018 paper in JAMA Psychiatry.
The high profile suicides of celebrities Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have drawn attention recently to a broader, troubling trend. Suicide is on the rise in the United States; rates increased in almost every state between 1999 and 2016, according to a report issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Veterans are at a higher risk for suicide than civilian adults — 22 percent higher, according to a 2016 report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
