Correcting the Record: What Is Actually Killing Veterans

Executive summary — the full report is available on request

The dominant civilian theory of veteran suicide is that combat broke them. It is an explanation that feels emotionally complete, and it requires nothing of the civilian world. The data tells a different story, and the difference matters, because every decision about where to invest in prevention begins with a theory of cause. Get the cause wrong, and the response goes to the wrong place while the deaths continue.

Nearly seven in ten veteran suicides involve veterans aged 50 and older, not young service members recently home from a war zone. Among veterans who served during Iraq and Afghanistan, suicide rates are 48 percent higher for those who were never deployed than for those who were. If combat trauma were the primary driver, that number would run the other direction. It doesn't. What the non-deployed and deployed populations share is not combat exposure. It's separation from the military itself.

The VA's own autopsy data on veteran suicide backs this up. The most frequently identified risk factor isn't PTSD or combat trauma, it's chronic pain, followed by sleep problems, declining physical ability, and relationship strain. Hopelessness shows up in nearly a third of cases, and the research ties that hopelessness most strongly to loss of role, purpose, and belonging, not to what happened in a war zone.

Combat exposure is real and it matters for the veterans it affects. But it is a contributor within a much larger picture, not the primary driver the culture assumes it to be. And that assumption has consequences: it keeps veteran suicide framed as a clinical problem for the VA to solve, rather than a transition and integration problem the civilian workforce has never been asked to own.

The full report traces why the wrong diagnosis persists, walks through the research on what actually protects against suicide risk (connectedness to relationships, purpose, and identity, not veteran-only peer support in isolation), and makes the case for what correcting the diagnosis actually demands: treating the civilian workforce as a participant in this crisis rather than an audience for it.

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Sources

• Stop Soldier Suicide, Veteran Suicide Statistics, citing VA/DoD data on non-deployed vs. deployed post-9/11 veteran suicide rates.

• VA Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. 2024 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, December 2024.

• VA Behavioral Health Autopsy Program data, 2021–2023, as reported in the VA 2024 Annual Report, Part 2, Section B.

• Sokol, Y. et al. (2024). Military experiences, connection to military identity, and time since military discharge as predictors of U.S. veteran suicide risk. PMC11407380.

• Bryan, C.J. et al. (2015). A meta-analytic review of the relationship between combat exposure and suicidal behavior among veterans.

• Klonsky, E.D. & May, A.M. (2015). The Three-Step Theory (3ST): A New Theory of Suicide Rooted in the Ideation-to-Action Framework. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy.

• Ames, D. et al. (2019). Moral injury, PTSD, and suicidality in veterans.

• MacLean, A. & Kleykamp, M. (2014). Proximity to war and support for and stigmatization of veterans. Social Problems.

• VA MIRECC VISN 2 Veteran Cultural Competence Training: civilian understanding gap data.

• Task and Purpose (Feb. 2026), citing the 2025 VA Annual Report.

• UTSA (2023) study on U.S. military veteran suicide age distribution.

• HROnBoard, ADP, CareerArc + INTOO Employer Branding Study: outplacement industry data.

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Sara B. McNamara, MSOD Founder, HumanWorks™ Solutions