There has been found to be a relationship between mental and emotional health, and suicide risk among veterans in California, We will use the data from the national health survey in estimating the prevalence and correlation of the suicidal behaviors among veterans in California. The prevalence of suicidal behaviors among veterans in California was mainly similar to those of previous estimates of the ideation and attempts among the adults of the United States general population. There has been found to be a significant relationship between mental and emotional health, and suicide risks in the United States among veterans. A study of posttraumatic stress disorder among the American veterans from California after the Vietnam War showed a prevalence of between 6 percent and 31 percent. There has been an evidence of increasing rate of suicide risk among active military and veterans in the United States.
According to a previous research by the Veterans Health Administration (VI-IA), there is a 66% increase in the suicide risk among the veterans who received health services. The rates of suicide in the military branches has usually surpassed that one of the general population. The suicide among those individuals with the history of the military service was closely associated with some psychiatric diagnoses, the time since separation from the military service, and active services. One recent study of the veterans from California showed a 125% prevalence of the suicide ideation had positive associations with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression and negative associations with social support availability. The suicidal behaviors and thoughts are commonly evident at an increased rates among individuals with some psychiatric disorders particularly the primary depressive disorder, PTSD, chemical dependency, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and anxiety.
Also, some psychosocial factors that affect the emotion of someone were found to be related to the risk of suicide attempts. These include careers, housing, physical health, unemployment, finances, relationship difficulties, and marital relationships. This paper is going to focus on the relationship between the mental and emotional health, and suicide risks among veterans in California Veterans in the United States are usually likely exposed to suicide risks as compared to nonveterans whereby about 5,000 veterans take their own lives annually. Research by the VHA, (2009) has indicated that some considerable individual proportion who commit suicide usually contact the health care clinicians before their death. A review of some 40 studies of the contact made with clinicians before the suicide occurred in California found that approximately 45 percent of people made contact with their primary care clinicians one month before their death. Another 19 percent was found to make contact with the mental healthcare clinicians before they committed suicide.
Adults over the age of 55 years constituted about 58 percent who made contact with their primary care clinicians a month before committing suicide. The same group had 11 percent of the veterans who visited the mental healthcare clinicians before their death. As a result, there has been found to exist a relationship between mental and emotional health, and suicide risks among veterans in California whereby clinicians can play a significant role in preventing them. However, there is little known concerning the health care visits content, which may occur proximal to the veterans’ suicides and the opportunities may exist for the intervention. Specifically, among the California veterans who subsequently commit suicide, there is almost nothing known pertaining how often the healthcare clinicians assess their psychiatric disorders, which may place the veterans at high risk of committing suicide.
This includes depression, substance use disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorders among others. In addition, it is not well comprehended about how often high-risk veteran patients may endorse suicide thoughts when the clinicians inquire about the suicidal ideation or the extent that these patients Visit the clinicians asking assistance or demonstrating some emotional distress. Since the general medical illness has been associated with the risk of suicide, it is usually taken that numerous patients make contact to their clinicians before committing suicide as a part of the routine care for general medical problems, To identify the relationship between mental and emotional health, and the risk of committing suicide in Oregon City, California some data was used The data used usually linked the death of veterans with healthcare data. The death certificate were from Oregon Violent Death Reporting System (OVDRS) and the healthcare data was from Veterans Integrated Service Network 20.
This comparison was done for the veterans who committed suicide between the years of 2000 and 2005 aged 18 years or older. Also, a related contact was made to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center Department (VAMC) in the twelve months before their death. In California and other states suicide was identified to be an epidemic for the combat veterans upon returning from war, Especially those who participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom (0le and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). When trying to understand the cause of suicide among those veterans, it was realized that suicide occurrence was more generally present among the civilians. This involves those who went to the war and returned, but they do not have a right mind. However, the information on the suicidal behavior in California among the returning combat veterans is usually limited to findings of the special epidemiological surveys and studies.
A recent study by the Department of the Veterans Affairs, (2010) revealed that suicide risk has increased for the former active duty veterans who mainly served in the Afghanistan or Iraq war zones. The standard mortality ratio (SMR) was found to be 1.33. There was 95% confidence interval (CI) and particularly for the veterans that were diagnosed with mental disorder. This study showed that the rate of suicide among the United States military veterans between the years 2005 and 2007 increased by 26%, The Veterans Affairs estimation in the year 2005 was that the suicide rate in 100,000 veterans of men aged between the ages of 18 to 29 was usually 44.99. But the rate was found to have increased to 56.77 in the year 2007. These rates were found to be much higher that for the general population of Californians, which were found to have risen from 35 to 39 between the years of 2005 to 2007 respectively.
It was found that many veterans usually died out of road accidents, drug overdoses, and motorcycle crashes after being discharged from the military since they had mental disorders. For instance, the Department of the Public Health in California State reported over 1,000 California veterans between the years 2005 to 2008 to have died who were aged 35 years. That number was three times higher as compared to the number of California service members who were killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts in the same period. It was later found that most of the California veterans who served in the military after retiring they suffered from various mental and emotional disorders. Most of them were found to suffer from PTSD as a result of seeing many traumatic events during their lifetime as they sewed in the military. Therefore, those accidental deaths were confirmed to be suicides since investigations showed that most of those who died were as a result of over speeding while under drugs and substances. It was realized that the suicide risk was more on those veterans who were suffering from mental and emotional disorders.
Most of the contributions to that conclusion was the comparison of the veterans who came from Iraq and Afghanistan wars where a majority were receiving psychological care due to their mental condition. The Veterans Health Administration rates in 2001 for men with mental disorders were 43.13/100,000 person annually and 10.41/100,000 for women annually. In the United States general population, it was 23,18/100,000 person annually for men and 5t22/100,000 persons annually for women. These further prove that the suicidal risk is higher among the California veterans suffering from mental and emotional disorders. A number of psychosocial factors have been associated with risk of suicide and suicide attempts. These factors involve the mental and emotional health such as unemployment, marital relationships, finances, posttraumatic stress disorders, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injuries, and spinal cord injuries.
Also, those patients with traumatic brain injuries are at increased risk of committing suicide. Those factors listed above usually increases the stress levels that makes the affected individual turn to committing suicide as an alternative. From the Veterans Affairs Department, (2001) it was discovered that for most of the individuals who committed suicide, they had a record one month before from Veterans Affairs Medical Center Departmentt These showed that those individuals were not in right mind and required medical attention. Particularly those veterans from the military, due to seeing more traumatic events, they developed PTSD after retiring from the military, When they became civilians, they committed suicide, especially through road accidents. In California, it was relatively rare for a report for suicidal behaviors and thoughts in the general population. A recent national survey by Kessler, et al,, (2014) revealed that about 13.5% of the Americans report suicide ideation during their lifetime.
Approximately 3.9% had made a suicide plan, and 46% were reported to have attempted suicide In the attempters group about 50% had made a serious attempt. These numbers are usually skyrocketing for the individual with psychiatric disorders In that group about 34% of the individuals were found to have a suicide plan. The 72% of the planners moved from planning a suicide to attempting it. Among the people who make suicide attempts, 60% of those who planned suicide attempts occurred within one month after health care from defined hospitals. The 90% of the unplanned attempts occurred within 12 months of receiving medical attention for psychiatric disorders, The data ttsed came from the Oregon Violent Death Reporting System (OVDRS) AND THE Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), the individuals considered were aged 18 years and over between the years of 2000 and 2005. The OVDRS mainly defines death by ICD-10 codes X60-X84, and Y870 for the underlying cause of death on their death certificates.
Then the individual was matched with his or her health record to determine his health status before he or she died. Hence, the OVDRS data was matched with the VISN 20 Data Warehousing by using the last four digits of the Social Security Number, date of birth, and name. About 95% of the data individuals found to have committed suicide were veteranst On the basis of the utilization data that was extracted from VISN 20 Data Warehouse, it was identified that 114 veterans within 12 months before their death had been receiving health care from VAMC. 112 of the veterans were found to have two-way communication over the phone or in- person between the patient and their healthcare personnel. Then a review of the 112 veterans of their medical records were done to determine whether those veterans were identified with symptoms of PTSD, depression, suicidal ideation or substance use disorder.
The psychiatric features were usually chosen on the basis of the evidence of association with the suicide risk. The passive suicidal ideation often was defined as being having thoughts pertaining suicide or considering oneself better off dead among the veteran patients. The emotional distress was mainly indicated by the documentation of the distress over a specific mental health or general medical concern or experiencing difficulty in coping with some stressful life events. Among the 26 veterans whose final contacts were usually in the mental health setting, 77% were assessed for PTSD, depression, and substance use disorder and 54% were usually assessed for suicidal ideation. Among the 22 veterans with finalcontacts with primary care, 45% were often assessed for PTSD, substance use disorder or depression and 9% were usually assessed for the suicidal ideation. Among the 64 veterans whose final contacts contained emergency or specialty services, 36% were mainly assessed with depression, PTSD, and substance use disorder on that day and 3% were usually assessed for suicidal ideation.
Approximately 37% (41) of the veterans were noted to have been experiencing emotional distress one month before they committed suicide. Among the 112 veterans who were aged 18 and over who committed suicide in the Oregon City between 2000 and 2005 and who visited VAMC before their death, 63% of them were receiving healthcare. Also, almost half of them received mental health care during the yeart More than half of the veterans were found to receive healthcare 30 days before their death About 21% received mental health care, and about 15% received primary care About 41% were assessed for the suicidal ideation a year before their death where 16% were mainly assessed during the last contact to VAMC. Approximately three-quarter of the patients who were asked about the suicidal thoughts, they denied it Over half of the patients were found to be receiving mental health care during their last contact with VAMC.
About 9% of the patients were undergoing primary care during their last contact who were assessed for the suicidal ideation. Therefore, the analysis shows that for most of the veterans who committed suicide it was related to mental and emotional health The mental and emotional health was determined by manually documenting the veteran patients in Oregon City, California who were undergoing healthcare before they committed suicide Over half of the patients were assessed to have undergone either mental health care or primary care before they committed suicide. The study covered depression, substance use disorder, and PTSD as the mental and emotional problems. Nine people out of 26 during their last contact were found to have thoughts of suicide ideation. Hence, from the above study it is evident that there is a relationship between mental and emotional, and suicide risk in California. Most of the veterans who committed suicide were found to have been suffering from a particular mental health or emotional problemt Particularly one month before they committed suicide.
It is evident that there is a relationship between mental and emotional health, and suicide risk of veterans in California The rate of suicide was seen to be low for the general population and high for those individuals with mental and emotional problems such as depression, PTSD, and substance use disorder among others. It was found that the Veterans Health Administration rates in 2001 for men with mental disorders were 43‘13/100,000 person annually and 10.41/100,000 for women annually. In the United States general population it was 23t18/100,000 person annually for men and Sin/100,000 persons annually for women, From the study in Oregon City, California, among the 112 veterans who were reviewed about 63% were found to be suffering from mental and emotional problems at the time they committed suicide This can be translated to be more than those who committed suicide without suicide ideation during their last contact.
Though three-quarters of the patients denied having suicide thoughts during their last contact, they ended up committing suicide after 12 months, Therefore, this becomes clear that most of the veterans who committed suicide received mental health care before committing suicide despite them having no suicidal thoughts Some follow-up was done for those patients who were assessed to have suicide thoughts during their last contact Since it is evident that there is a relationship between mental and emotional health and suicide risks of veterans in California, it is good to take some precautions. Firstly, it was found that most veterans committed suicide after about one month of receiving mental health care in Department of the Public Health in California It should be good if the patients are followed-up through regular visits and communication to give them the meaning of life. This is because most of them became desperate and remained with the only alternative of committing suicide.
Secondly, those patients who deny having suicide thoughts are the one prone to performing it since they are not given good attention. Provided the patient is undergoing a mental healthcare, they should be followed to prevent them from committing suicide, Thirdly, there should be introduced some education and counseling for the veterans suffering from mental disorders such as PTSD. The education should involve them to perform more physical exercises and activities that will help them cheer up. This will help them to leave healthy and reduce the level of stress and depression. Finally, those veterans who come from the military who are found to suffer from PTSD due to witnessing many traumatic events should not be fully released to become civilians. They should first be taken to some sort of training that reminds them of how to interact with people in the society without conflicts, Also, they should be given some other tasks to perform so that to eradicate the mental health problems they might be suffering from.
