Table 1.

Characteristics of Regular Army enlisted suicide attempters, ideators, and decedents who completed neurocognitive testing, versus controls.¹

			Cases
	Controls (N = 9,893)		Suicide Attempters (N = 607)			Suicide Ideators (N = 955)			Suicide Decedents (N = 57)
	N	%	N	%	χ2	N	%	χ2	N	%	χ2
Gender					30.11*			4.51*			3.55
Female	874	8.8	92	15.2		103	10.8		1	1.8
Male	9,019	91.2	515	84.8		852	89.2		56	98.2
Age at testing					129.40*			72.08*			11.19*
17–20	1,499	15.2	171	28.2		215	22.5		13	22.8
21–24	3,404	34.4	250	41.2		358	37.5		17	29.8
25–29	2,481	25.1	114	18.8		232	24.3		20	35.1
30–34	1,261	12.7	39	6.4		75	7.9		1	1.8
35–39	850	8.6	23	3.8		51	5.3		3	5.3
40+	398	4.0	10	1.6		24	2.5		3	5.3
Education					101.07*			148.44*			1.15
< High School2	1,696	17.1	195	32.1		301	31.5		10	17.5
High School	7,445	75.3	387	63.8		619	64.8		43	75.4
Some College	395	4.0	17	2.8		20	2.1		1	1.8
College+	357	3.6	8	1.3		15	1.6		3	5.3
Race					13.12*			17.69*			4.78
White	6,519	65.9	440	72.5		690	72.3		44	77.2
Black	1,641	16.6	80	13.2		126	13.2		8	14.0
Hispanic	1,190	12.0	64	10.5		96	9.9		2	3.5
Asian	377	3.8	14	2.3		32	3.4		2	3.5
Other	166	1.7	9	1.5		11	1.2		1	1.8
Mental health diagnosis prior to testing3					152.21*			291.04*			8.51*
Yes	2,647	26.8	297	48.9		489	51.2		25	43.9
No	7,246	73.2	310	51.1		466	48.8		32	56.1

¹Case-control sample includes enlisted Regular Army enlisted soldiers (i.e., excluding officers and members of the U.S. Army National Guard and Army Reserve) on active duty during the years 2004–2009. Cases are the subset of soldiers who completed neurocognitive testing prior to their first administratively documented suicide attempt. Controls are soldiers who completed the neurocognitive testing prior to their sampled person-month record, representing a subset of a 1:200 stratified probability sample of all active duty Regular Army person-months in the population, exclusive of soldiers with a non-fatal suicidal behavior and all person-months involving a death (i.e., due to suicide, combat, homicide, injury, or illness). All records in the 1:200 control sample were assigned a weight of 200 to adjust for the under-sampling of months not associated with a suicidal behavior.

²< High School includes: General Educational Development credential (GED), home study diploma, occupational program certificate, correspondence school diploma, high school certificate of attendance, adult education diploma, and other non-traditional high school credentials.

³Mental health diagnosis prior to testing was determined based on ICD-9 mental disorder codes (Appendix B).

⁴Based on throughput scores from the Army’s Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics (ANAM) battery.

^*p < 0.05, two-tailed.