Nearly 30 percent of the 834,463 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans treated at Veterans Affairs Department medical facilities have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, reports The Daily Beast, citing new VA analysis. Veterans advocates said these data support what they’ve long suspected—that VA officials continue to underestimate the number of recent vets suffering from PTSD, states the Oct. 21 report. However, a VA spokesperson told the newspaper that the agency still believes the overall PTSD rate is about 20 percent across the full population of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans—not just those who have visited VA facilities. Previous reports showed that military personnel who deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan are more than three times as likely to screen positive for PTSD and major depression than those with no prior deployments, states the report.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.