Multiple military deployments in families may raise teen suicide risk

Multiple military deployments in families may raise teen suicide risk
LA Times
By Alan Zarembo
November 18, 2013

Teens with family members in the military appear more at risk for suicide if those relatives are deployed abroad multiple times, a USC study finds.

Teenagers with family members in the military were more likely to contemplate suicide if their relatives were deployed overseas multiple times, according to researchers from USC.

After analyzing survey data from 14,299 secondary school students in California — including more than 1,900 with parents or siblings in the military — the researchers found a link between a family member's deployment history and a variety of mental health problems, including "suicidal ideation," or thoughts about suicide.

Their study, published online Monday by the Journal of Adolescent Health, joins a growing body of evidence that the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken a hefty toll on children in military families.

"The cost of military deployment goes well beyond money and our soldiers' lives," said Stephan Arndt, a University of Iowa psychologist who was not involved in the study. His work has found elevated rates of drug and alcohol use among children whose parents were currently or recently deployed.

Most research on the mental health of military children has focused on those who are already receiving treatment or attending special summer camps. Those kinds of studies don't allow experts to estimate the rates of psychiatric problems among all military children or make comparisons with other children.

So the USC team tried a different approach. The researchers piggybacked on a statewide health survey of public school students in 2011 and added questions for seventh-, ninth- and 11th-graders in four Southern California school districts — all near military bases — about the military status and deployment histories of their parents and siblings.

Students with close relatives serving in the military were no more likely to suffer mental health problems than students with no relatives on active duty, the team found. The key factor was how many times a parent or sibling — currently serving or not — had been deployed during the previous decade.
read more here