Suicidal Thoughts More Frequent Among Teens of Parents Deployed Overseas a Lot

Teenagers with family members in the military were more likely to contemplate suicide if their relatives were deployed overseas multiple times, USC researchers found in a study scheduled to be published today.

After analyzing survey data from 14,299 secondary school students in California -- including more than 1,900 with parents or siblings in the military -- the researchers found a link between a family member's deployment history and a variety of mental health problems, including thoughts about suicide, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Their study, scheduled to be published online by the Journal of Adolescent Health today, joins a growing body of evidence that the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken a hefty toll on children in military families.

Most research on the mental health of military children has focused on those who are already receiving treatment or attending special summer camps. Those kinds of studies don't allow experts to estimate the rates of psychiatric problems among all military children or make comparisons with other children, The Times reported.

So the USC team tried a different approach. The researchers piggybacked on a statewide health survey of public school students in 2011 and added questions for seventh-, ninth- and 11th-graders in four Southern California school districts -- all near military bases -- about the military status and deployment histories of their parents and siblings.

Students with close relatives serving in the military were no more likely to suffer mental health problems than students with no relatives on active duty, the team found. The key factor was how many times a parent or sibling, currently serving or not, had been deployed during the previous decade.

-- City News Service