In an effort to curb suicides among US service men, researchers have analyzed the data on more than 40,000 UD soldiers to find factors which are likely to push soldiers towards suicide.
The US army hopes a new tool will help in identifying soldiers who are at the greatest risk of suicide. This statistical tool will help US Army officials target their suicide prevention efforts.
The US Army, armed with a new analytical tool hope to counter a surge in suicides by soldiers on the basis of history, age and injuries indicate if they are at high risk of taking their own lives.
The analysis encompassed 40820 US soldiers who have been hospitalized for psychiatric problems over a six-year period. The researchers have created an algorithm to find out the Army personal who are more likely to commit suicide. 68 soldiers had committed suicide within a year of the hospitalization.
Over 50% of these suicides happened among the 1947 soldiers who were identified by the Army algorithm as high risk group.
The study was led by Ronald Kessler, a Harvard University sociologist and suicide expert and was published on Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. He said the statistical model could be used to target suicide prevention efforts.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.