Abstract
Background:
Suicide is a leading causes of death in the U.S. Comparative State-level spatial analysis between veterans and whole U.S. population can reveal differences in conditions for targeted interventions and intricate geographical patterns.
Methods:
Study population contain 2018 and 2019 suicide deaths of veterans and whole U.S. population. They were used to calculate state-level rates. States were classified by whether their veteran rates and whole U.S. population rates were above or below the respective mean rates. Local Moran’s I was leveraged to examine spatial autocorrelation.
Results:
State-level suicide mortality rates and disparities among states were generally higher for veterans (2018: 37.3±7.2; 2019: 46.8± 8.3) than whole US population (2018: 16.6± 4.3; 2019: 16.4±4.4). For both populations there were statistically significant clusters of states with high suicide rates. Over one-fourth of states demonstrated inverse relationships, with rates above mean for one group but below for other. Veterans are at higher risk with over one-third of states had greater than average veteran suicide risk ratio.
Conclusions:
Veterans are at higher risk than whole population across all states. Mortality disparities among states and clusters of states with high and low rates suggests targeted interventions and cooperative health strategies may help address these differences.
