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| Posted: November 20, 2008 |
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The Army says that suicides among its active duty personnel have doubled in recent years, and multiple deployments may be contributing to the increase. A veterans' advocate, an Army psychiatrist and the head of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs took your questions. |
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| Nancy of El Paso, Texas asks |
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| I would like to know the comparative rate of suicides, traumatic brain injury, depression and PTSD among Hispanics. How do they compare to other groups? |
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| Paul Sullivan responds: |
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 Thank you for your question about the demographic details among veterans with completed suicides, traumatic brain injury (TBI), depression, and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To the best of my knowledge, VA does not collect this information. If VA does collect the data, then VA does not release it. Veterans for Common Sense plans to ask Congress to order VA to collect the data needed to make these comparisons based on racial and ethnic groups. We will also ask Congress to collect data and make comparisons based on additional demographic characteristics, such as the number of deployments, the length of deployments, gender, branch of service, age, and rank.
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| Elspeth Ritchie responds: |
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 Traditionally the rate of suicide among Hispanics in the Army is low. For 2007 and 2008, it was only 2 percent of the total number of suicides. We do not have the information on TBI, depression and PTSD broken out by ethnic groups. We do also break out suicides by age and gender; most are young males. In the civilian world, this is also a high risk population. In both the civilian world and military, suicides of middle-aged men are on the rise.
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| James Peake responds: |
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 VA constantly monitors the quality of our traumatic brain injury, depression, and PTSD care through the use of outcome performance measures. These measures are then used to enable us to make organizational improvements and to enhance the programs we provide. Comparative rates of suicide, traumatic brain injury, depression and PTSD in returning OEF/OIF veterans specific to Hispanics and other racial or ethnic groups are not available at this time. In general, in the American population as a whole and in veterans, suicide rates are significantly lower in African Americans than in whites. In the American population as a whole, rates are somewhat lower among Hispanics.
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