Risk of suicide attempt among soldiers increased as the number of past-year suicide attempts within their unit increased for combat arms and other military occupation specialties and for units of any size but particularly for smaller units, a recent study found. Using administrative data from the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (STARRS), this study identified person-month records for all active-duty, regular US Army, enlisted soldiers who attempted suicide from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2009 (n=9,650), and an equal-probability sample of control person-months (n= 153,528). Researchers found:

• Of the final analytic sample of 9,512 enlisted soldiers who attempted suicide and 151,526 control person-months, most were male (86.4%), aged ≤29 years (68.4%), <21 years when entering the army (62.2%), white (59.8%), high school educated (76.6%), and currently married (54.8%).
• In adjusted models, soldiers were more likely to attempt suicide if ≥1 suicide attempts occurred in their unit during the past year, with odds increasing as the number of unit attempts increased.