Service members and veterans with brain injuries, including traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), die by suicide at higher rates than those without them. A new government report shows that the rate is more than 94% higher—underscoring what many veteran advocates have been asserting for years.
According to the report by the Department of Veterans Affairs, data from 2023—the most recent available—showed suicide rates among veterans rising after dipping in recent years, with 35.2 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 34.7 deaths per 100,000 the year before. In a measure of just how tragic this trend is, the veteran rate is twice that of civilians in the same year.
The numbers are even more dire among younger veterans, with the report finding it the second-leading cause of death for veterans under 45 years old. Shockingly, the suicide rate for veterans under 34 years old was 47.9 deaths per 100,000 people in 2023, nearly three times the rate of civilians the same age.
The report found that veterans with brain injuries had a dramatically increased risk of suicide. In 2023, the rate for those with TBI diagnoses was 77.6 deaths per 100,000, almost double the rate of veterans without a TBI diagnosis. This data echoes a previous report by the VA indicating a strong link between multiple brain injuries and suicidal ideation. A study published last year by researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Uniformed University of the Health Sciences, VA Salt Lake City Healthcare System and University of Utah School of Medicine also found that the suicide rate among post-9/11 veterans who suffered a brain injury far outpaced the rate for those veterans who didn’t.
Collectively, the new VA report and these earlier findings are crucial because military-related brain injuries are so prevalent, affecting an estimated 500,000-plus U.S. veterans since 2000. But because many military brain injuries are literally microscopic, they’re hard to detect pre-mortem, and the number of veterans and service members who are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed could be substantially higher.
“If a veteran seeks care for symptoms and they’re told that their brain scans are normal, that doesn’t definitively mean their brain is normal,” said Dr. Brian Edlow, co-director of neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s possible there’s a brain injury, but our diagnostic tests are simply not good enough to see it.”
Complicating the diagnostic picture is the fact that military brain injuries can result from not just projectiles penetrating the skull or acute concussions but also blast overpressure waves from weapons fire or explosions and wave slamming—repeated whole-body impacts military personnel experience on fast boats. The resulting brain injuries can cause headaches, blurred vision, sleeplessness, irritability, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, all of which may be misattributed to other disorders or injuries.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. With greater support for targeted research, we can ensure that these invisible wounds are diagnosed early and accurately so these service members and veterans get the treatment they need before it’s too late.
A first step is to fully restore funding to the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs’ (CDMRP) Traumatic Brain Injury and Psychological Health Research Program. The funding was zeroed out in fiscal year 2025 and reinstated this year but at a 77% reduction from the 2024 level. This funding is critical to advancing important research on military TBI.
Congress can also pass H.R. 6823, which would establish a pilot program in the Department of Defense to support research into innovative TBI-spotting devices that can accurately distinguish among the range of brain injuries service members experience.
Another important effort that deserves support is the Precision Brain Health Research Act (S. 800), which would require the VA to develop a 10-year research plan on the effects of repetitive, low-level blast injuries on U.S. service members. Neither the VA nor DOD has comprehensively studied the health effects of these injuries.
H.R. 6993, the BEACON Act of 2026, would build on these efforts by establishing new VA grant programs to support the research, development, and evaluation of innovative neurorehabilitation treatments for veterans with chronic mild traumatic brain injury, with a strong focus on collaboration, oversight and integration with existing VA research and mental health services.
The U.S. spends about $588 million annually on suicide prevention for veterans—and almost nothing on diagnostic research—and the rate of death remains tragically and stubbornly high. If we want to seriously reduce suicide, we must first learn to find the brain injuries we’re currently missing.
Shannon Finn Connell is CEO of the Invisible Wounds Foundation.
Barry Jesinoski is CEO of DAV (Disabled American Veterans).
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
