News & Media

PM&R faculty Lisa Brenner, Claire Hoffmire and Jeri Forster, along with Trisha A. Hostetter, Rachel Sayko Adams and Kelly Stearns-Yoder, have a newly published study that found military veterans with a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are more than twice as likely to die by suicide compared with veterans without such a diagnosis. The researchers reviewed electronic medical records of more than 1.4 million military veterans who received care from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) between Oct. 1, 2005 and Sept. 30, 2015. Combining these records with National Death Index data, they evaluated the severity of TBI, and diagnoses of psychiatric and other medical conditions. Among those that died by suicide, the method was also analyzed.

After adjusting for psychiatric diagnoses, such as depression, the researchers found that those with moderate or severe TBI were 2.45 times as likely to die by suicide compared to those without a TBI diagnosis. Additionally, among suicide decedents, they report that the odds of using firearms as a means of suicide was significantly increased for those with moderate or severe TBI as compared to those without a history of TBI.