Increased Risk Of Suicide Among Veterans With Bipolar Disorder

Increased Risk Of Suicide Among Veterans With Bipolar Disorder.
Military veterans with psychiatric illnesses are at increased hazard for suicide, says a unheard of study. The greatest jeopardize is among males with bipolar disorder and females with substance mistreat disorders, according to the researchers at the US Department of Veterans Affairs and Healthcare System and the University of Michigan. Overall, bipolar discompose (the least common diagnosis at 9 percent) was more strongly associated with suicide than any other psychiatric condition.

The researchers examined the psychiatric records of more than three million veterans who received any prototype of woe at a VA facility in 1999 and were still alive at the beginning of 2000. The patients were tracked for the next seven years.

During that time, 7684 of the veterans committed suicide. Slightly half of them had at least one psychiatric diagnosis. All of the psychiatric conditions included in the meditate on - depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, essence berating disorders, post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) and other desire disorders - were associated with increased risk of suicide.

And "In men, the chance of suicide was greatest for those with bipolar disorder, followed by depression, substance abuse disorders, schizophrenia, other ache disorders and PTSD," the researchers wrote. "In women, the greatest risk of suicide was found in those with stuff abuse disorders, followed by bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, PTSD and other anxiety disorders".

Since bipolar infirmity was most likely to be associated with suicide, "this makes bipolar disorder extremely appropriate for targeted intervention efforts or attempts to improve medication adherence," the researchers wrote. The ruminate on found that many veterans with psychiatric conditions weren't identified by the VA health system.

So "This could be owing to stigma, which may have made individuals less like as not to report their mental health symptoms to physicians, an force that could be more pronounced among men with military experience," the researchers wrote. "These findings highlight the weight of improved identification, diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric diagnoses (particularly bipolar disorder, depression, gist use disorders and schizophrenia) of all health care system users" clicking here. The consider appears in the November issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry.