Fort Carson "Strong Star" Suicide Study Weak

Short-term cognitive behavioral therapy reduces suicide attempts among at-risk soldiers
News Medical
Published on February 16, 2015

Short-term cognitive behavioral therapy dramatically reduces suicide attempts among at-risk military personnel, according to findings from a research study that included investigators from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The two-year study, funded by the Army's Military Operational Medicine Research Program, was conducted at Fort Carson, Colo. It involved 152 active-duty soldiers who had either attempted suicide or had been determined to be at high risk for suicide, and evaluated the effectiveness of a brief cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in preventing future suicide attempts.

The study found that soldiers receiving CBT were 60 percent less likely to make a suicide attempt during the 24-month follow-up than those receiving standard treatment. The results were published online Friday, Feb. 13, by The American Journal of Psychiatry. The article is available online at http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/.

The findings are particularly encouraging, given that rates of active-duty service members receiving psychiatric diagnoses increased by more than 60 percent during a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rates of suicides and suicide attempts rose in comparable numbers.

"The significant increase in military suicides over the past decade is a national tragedy," said Alan Peterson, Ph.D., a co-investigator on the study who is a professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio and director of the military-focused STRONG STAR Consortium. "The Department of Defense has responded by investing significant resources into military suicide research, and the findings from this study may be the most important and most hopeful to date. To see a 60 percent reduction in suicide attempts among at-risk active-duty soldiers after a brief intervention is truly exciting," Dr. Peterson said.
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Great selling job on what the military has invested and on the study, however, considering the study came after over a decade of funds producing increased suicides, not much more than a bunch of words. And this is what they didn't tell you from the article

Brief Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Effects on Post-Treatment Suicide Attempts in a Military Sample: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial With 2-Year Follow-Up

Objective:
The authors evaluated the effectiveness of brief cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for the prevention of suicide attempts in military personnel.

Method:
In a randomized controlled trial, active-duty Army soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo., who either attempted suicide or experienced suicidal ideation with intent, were randomly assigned to treatment as usual (N=76) or treatment as usual plus brief CBT (N=76). Assessment of incidence of suicide attempts during the follow-up period was conducted with the Suicide Attempt Self-Injury Interview. Inclusion criteria were the presence of suicidal ideation with intent to die during the past week and/or a suicide attempt within the past month. Soldiers were excluded if they had a medical or psychiatric condition that would prevent informed consent or participation in outpatient treatment, such as active psychosis or mania. To determine treatment efficacy with regard to incidence and time to suicide attempt, survival curve analyses were conducted. Differences in psychiatric symptoms were evaluated using longitudinal random-effects models.

Results:
From baseline to the 24-month follow-up assessment, eight participants in brief CBT (13.8%) and 18 participants in treatment as usual (40.2%) made at least one suicide attempt (hazard ratio=0.38, 95% CI=0.16–0.87, number needed to treat=3.88), suggesting that soldiers in brief CBT were approximately 60% less likely to make a suicide attempt during follow-up than soldiers in treatment as usual. There were no between-group differences in severity of psychiatric symptoms.

Conclusions:
Brief CBT was effective in preventing follow-up suicide attempts among active-duty military service members with current suicidal ideation and/or a recent suicide attempt.

Plus this means they had 152 soldiers attempt suicide at least once at Fort Carson 2 years ago. How many of them had been in the Warrior Transition Units reported to have been mistreating them? All of them would have had Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, which has been known to increase the stigma of seeking help. The other factor is that while the study is small, the follow up assessment is important but the military admitted they do not do post deployment screenings.

Then if we add in how the VA and the DOD invested billions in research on PTSD associated with combat going back generations, they forgot lessons learned.