Tim Kennedy on veterans: what the evidence says · JRE #1833
SUBJECT: VETERANS
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
So 18 to 35 year olds are the most vulnerable population that are just coming back from a deployment for suicide. And they have seen an 80% increase, I think it was like 86% increase in suicides in that group of people coming back from combat.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Kennedy claims an approximately 80-86% increase in suicides among 18-to-35-year-olds recently returned from a combat deployment. No such figure appears in official U.S. government suicide surveillance data. The VA's 2023 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, the primary federal dataset on veteran suicide, shows the unadjusted suicide rate for veterans aged 18-34 rose 7.1% from 2020 to 2021, the most recent year covered, far smaller than the figure Kennedy cites, and that data covers all veterans in that age band rather than a specific cohort recently returned from deployment. Longer-term VA reporting has documented year-to-year fluctuations, including both increases and declines, in suicide rates for younger veterans, but no VA or DoD report identifies an 80-86% spike specific to the just-returned-from-combat population Kennedy describes. No peer-reviewed study located through literature search surfaced a figure matching Kennedy's number either. As stated, the claim's magnitude and its specific deployment-return cohort are not corroborated by available primary data.