War is not prime cause of military suicides

Some 52 percent of troops who committed suicide while on active duty from 2008 to 2011 were never assigned to Afghanistan or Iraq, reported Los Angeles Times. And some experts say many of them bring mental health issues.

This research upends the popular belief that a large increase in suicides over the last decade stems from the psychological toll of combat and repeated deployments to war.

“A lot of the risk for suicide in the military is the stuff they bring with them,” said Dr. Murray Stein, a psychiatrist at UC San Diego who is studying suicide in the army.

The Los Angeles Times interviewed relatives and friends of five service members who committed suicide without having war experience. All were men who married young and their relationships were over or crumbling.

They struggled with the direction of their lives and joined the military in search of purpose or meaning, their relatives and friends said.

And they concealed their psychological problems. Four of the men longed to go to war, and the disappointment of not being sent only heightened a sense of desperation.

Craig Bryan, a research director at the University of Utah’s National center for veterans studies, said the military has become a more stressful and demanding place, even for those not sent to war.

"If these service members are coming in with preexisting vulnerabilities, it's more likely these vulnerabilities will be activated," Bryan said.