Much has been written in the lay media over the past two decades about suicides among active-duty service members and military veterans, with much of this coverage referring to an “epidemic” of soldier suicides. While the U.S. federal government, Department of Defense (DoD), Veterans Affairs (VA), and non-profit foundations have launched suicide prevention efforts aimed at military veterans and servicemembers, we have not yet made an effort to understand suicide in the larger historical context of society and culture. Yet, it may be counter-productive to focus on military-related suicides apart from societal context. That is, without considering comparative rates among civilians or long-term historical data on suicide rates among both civilian and military populations.

One recent study found that age- and sex-adjusted suicide rates among service members were lower than or comparable to civilian suicide rates every year from 2005–2014 (Reimann and Mazuchowski, 2018). This is useful context in that it suggests combat trauma in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) may not be a primary driver of military suicides. However, examining historical rates over a ten-year period should not be considered sufficient for understanding long-term historical trends. For that, one needs at least fifty to one hundred years or longer. The reason is that suicide rates may fluctuate by as much as 20–40% in any given year due to random error and macro trends in suicide rates can take the better part of a century or more to become observable (Eaton et al., 2006).

We previously conducted a historical epidemiological study of active-duty U.S. Army suicides over the course of almost two hundred years (Smith et al., 2019). Reported results showed an overall trend in increasing annual suicide rates among service members through the nineteenth century, peaking in 1883 with a rate of 118.69 suicides per 100,000 soldiers. After that point, the documented suicide rate decreased in three successive waves corresponding to the end of the following wars: the Spanish-American War (1898), World War I (1914–1918), and World War II (1939–1945). WWII had the historically lowest reported rate, with 5 suicides per 100,000 in 1944/45. Rates during the Cold War (approximately 1945–1991) stabilized at about 10–15 suicides per 100,000 soldiers.

This is consistent with Durkheim's conclusion from 1897 that suicide rates tend to decline during active phases of war (Durkheim, 1951). However, the Army suicide rate increased during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, eventually rising to 36.4 per 100,000 in 2020 (Department of Defense 2022). In other words, military suicides did not decrease as expected during the GWOT. For example, there were a total of 278 recorded suicide deaths among active-duty U.S. Army troops during the four years of the entire U.S. Civil War (1861–1865), less than the total annual number since 2001 (Frueh and Smith, 2012).

Altogether, the data show that U.S. servicemember suicide rates have increased substantially since the start of the GWOT. However, we do not currently know what is driving these suicides. Is it military-specific factors (e.g. higher incidence of TBI), per se, or other factors inherent in a changing modern society? The answer to this question has profound implications for public health suicide prevention efforts. One way to address this important question is to compare military and civilian suicide rates over time. In the current study, we examine historical suicide rate data for U.S. Army servicemembers and civilians dating back to 1900.