Military Matters: Interpersonal Violence and Suicide Risk Among U.S. Army Soldiers – Oscar I. Gonzalez, PhD, James A. Naifeh, PhD, and Holly Herberman Mash, PhD

Suicidal behaviors among U.S. Army soldiers increased sharply during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Nock et al., 2013; Ursano, Kessler, et al., 2015) and remain a major public health concern. The Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS) is a multicomponent epidemiological and neurobiological study designed to improve understanding of risk and resilience factors for suicide and its psychopathological correlates, generating actionable findings to inform Army suicide prevention efforts (Ursano et al., 2014). Although deployment and combat exposure are a natural focus of military suicide research, it is important to consider how other stressors during a soldier’s life influence risk (Nock et al., 2013). Army STARRS has devoted particular attention to the role of interpersonal violence (IV). Here we provide a selected review of those findings.

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