Suicide attempts in U.S. Army combat arms, special forces and combat medics

BMC Psychiatry

Table 1 Multivariate association of military occupation with suicide attempt among Regular Army enlisted soldiers, adjusting for socio-demographic and service-related variables^{a, b}

	OR	(95% CI)	Cases (n)	Total (n)^c	Rate^d	Pop %^e	SRE^f
Occupation
Combat arms	1.2*	(1.1–1.2)	2506	7,159,106	420	23.3	417
Special forces	0.3*	(0.2–0.5)	16	368,016	52	1.2	102
Combat medic	1.4*	(1.3–1.5)	682	1,470,882	556	4.8	504
Other	1.0	–	6446	21,716,246	356	70.7	357
χ² ₃	126.2*

^aThe sample of enlisted soldiers (n = 9650 cases, 153,523 control person-months) is a subset of the total sample (n = 193,617 person-months) from the Army STARRS Historical Administrative Data Study (HADS). Control person-months were assigned a weight of 200 to adjust for under-sampling
^bLogistic regression models included gender, age at Army entry, current age, race/ethnicity, education, marital status, time in service (≤ 1 year, 2 years, 3–4 years, 5–10 years, >10 years), deployment status (never, currently, or previously deployed), and military occupation. The model also included a dummy predictor variable for calendar month and year to control for secular trends
^cTotal includes both cases (i.e., soldiers with a suicide attempt) and control person-months
^dRate per 100,000 person-years, calculated based on n₁/n₂, where n₁ is the unique number of soldiers within each category and n₂ is the annual number of person-years, not person-months, in the population (n = 3.08 million)
^ePop % = percent of the population of enlisted soldiers
^fSRE = Standardized risk estimates (suicide attempters per 100,000 person-years) were calculated assuming other predictors were at their sample-wide means
*p < 0.05

ISSN: 1471-244X