www.vmwusa.org/index.php/committees/healthcare/407-stud -
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Published on: 9/17/2009
Last Visited: 11/2/2009
Last month, Robert J. Ursano, chairman of the psychiatry department at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, was named to lead an interdisciplinary team of four research institutions involved in the project.
The study will be "complex in its design, and it's looking at a rare phenomenon," Ursano said.
A number of factors may play roles in suicide, according to Ursano, including post-traumatic stress disorder, family issues, alcohol abuse and neurobiological factors.
Repeated deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since 2001 is another factor, but one that does not by itself account for the increases in suicide, Ursano said.
"It's a much more complex aggregate of factors," Ursano said.