(A version of this commentary appeared earlier in Stars and Stripes.)
Brain injuries among U.S. veterans who joined the armed forces after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks correlate significantly with higher suicide rates, a new study found that examined data going back to 2006.
The findings underscore the urgency for why the U.S. must focus on investing greater research into diagnosing and treating the spectrum of brain injuries servicemembers experience, from blunt force to the head to blast waves caused by firing weapons in training or combat.
The JAMA Network recently published a study highlighting that the suicide rate among post-9/11 veterans who suffered a brain injury far outpaced the rate for those veterans who didn’t. In addition, the suicide rates among both sets of veterans, those with brain injury and those without, far exceeded the suicide rate among civilians.
Researchers at the University of Texas in San Antonio, the Uniformed University of Health Sciences and the Veterans Affairs Salt Lake City Health Care System scoured the data of post 9/11 veterans back to 2006, several years after the initial U.S. deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.
What they concluded was that the suicide rates among those with and without a brain injury have steadily risen since then, reaching their peak in 2020. But of those with a brain injury, the rate of suicide was especially high — approximately 100 veterans per 100,000 died by suicide that year, while approximately 65 vets per 100,000 without brain injury died by suicide. Civilian suicide deaths were far fewer — about 20 deaths per 100,000 that year, where it has hovered for nearly a decade, consistently far behind veteran suicides.
Brain-injured vets have higher suicide rate
In each year studied by researchers – from 2006 through 2022 – the suicide rate steadily climbed for veterans with and without brain injuries, until in 2009 when the rate of suicide accelerated dramatically for both. But the suicide rate for brain-injured veterans has been consistently well ahead of vets without brain injuries during the entire period studied by the researchers.
The promising news within the study is that while suicide rates among post 9/11 veterans have climbed in the last two decades, they began to fall in 2020 through 2022. This was true for both those with traumatic brain injuries and those without.
It led the researchers to conclude that some government programs “may be contributing to reductions in suicide. Evaluation of these potential impacts is critical as the government considers budget cuts to VA programs.”
The findings are important because suicide is among the main causes of death for this particular demographic of U.S. veterans. And because brain injuries are the signature injury for veterans who joined after 9/11, with at least a half million vets suffering from them, any reduction in the rate of suicide among this group would translate into many lives saved.
Congress weighs law to improve brain health for vets
The report comes as Congress is weighing passage of an important legislative proposal that could help curtail suicide among veterans with brain injuries. The Precision Brain Health Research Act of 2025 seeks to identify and research critical brain health issues among veterans with repetitive low-level blast exposures sustained during military service.
The effort would be a major advance in the long battle to prod the federal government into focusing on the long-term effects of brain injuries induced by low-level blast exposure. These types of injuries are often categorized as so-called mild traumatic brain injuries, a misnomer that does not capture the breadth of damage they can cause.
Low-level blast exposure is commonplace in the military. Even firing a weapon in training can expose service members to the effects of blast waves, which can result in brain injuries. They in turn can cause headaches, blurred vision, sleeplessness, irritability, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation.
The JAMA Network study provides more powerful evidence of the strong link between military-related brain injuries and suicide. It also provides yet another compelling argument for the government to step up its commitment to servicemembers who put their lives, and brain health, on the line. Given the vast number servicemembers with some form of brain injury, they risk a future of debilitation unless Congress and the administration act.