Increasing rates of suicide in the military indicate current assessment approaches are not yielding accurate determinations of risk. Concern that endorsement of suicidal ideation may result in obstacles to career advancement may be resulting in nondisclosure.
To test this, we recruited a sample of US National Guard personnel (n = 789; 81.7% male; 63.2% white) and administered two measures of current thoughts of suicide. One measure was integrated into our risk assessment protocol and soldiers were thus aware that answers could result in referral to on site military mental health professionals. The other measure was not integrated into the risk assessment protocol and soldiers were thus aware that results would not be reported to on site military mental health professionals.
As hypothesized, a higher proportion of individuals reported current thoughts of suicide on the measure not integrated into the risk protocol (9.4%) than on the measure that was (6.0%). Also as hypothesized, a higher proportion of those willing to endorse current thoughts of suicide on the measure not integrated into the risk protocol denied current thoughts of suicide on the one that was (61.5%) than vice versa (39.0%). Limitations include cross-sectional self-report data and a lack of counter-balancing of measures.
The results indicate that increasing the confidentiality of risk assessments within the National Guard increases the likelihood of reporting of current thoughts of suicide.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 09 November 2018.
All research outputs
#21,530,643
of 27,251,929 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Clinical Psychology
#259
of 276 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#196,696
of 281,851 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Clinical Psychology
#6
of 6 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,251,929 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 18th percentile – i.e., 18% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 276 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.6. This one is in the 17th percentile – i.e., 17% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 281,851 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 25th percentile – i.e., 25% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 6 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one.
