Levine, J., & Sher, L. (2023). Suicidal Behavior in a Military Veteran with Multiple Psychiatric Comorbidities and Type 2 Diabetes: an Educational Case Report. Psychiatria Danubina, 35(2), 260-262.

Introduction

United States (U.S.) military veterans have a lot of psychiatric and medical problems. One study reviewed data from 4,461,208 veterans receiving primary care within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and found that 1,147,022 had at least one of the following psychiatric disorders: substance use disorders (8.3%), anxiety (4.8%), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (9.3%), depression (13.5%), or serious mental illness (i.e. schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) (3.7%) (Trivedi et al. 2015). In 2020, diabetes was one of the top-10 leading causes of death for U.S. military veterans (Department of Veterans Affairs 2022).

Psychiatric and medical problems are frequently as- sociated with suicidal behavior (Aziraj-Smajić & Hasa- nović 2020, Giupponi et al. 2018). For example, an epi- demiological study of the population of Sweden showed a 3.4-fold risk increase in suicide death among patients with diabetes in comparison to the general population (Sher 2022). Military veterans have higher rates of sui- cide than the general population. According to the VA National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, the suicide rate for veterans was 57.3% higher than non-vet- eran U.S. adults in 2020, after adjusting for age and sex differences (Department of Veterans Affairs 2022).