Fact Checker: Joni Ernst on veterans’ suicide rates

Introduction

'We lose 22 veterans to suicide each day and tragically, female veterans commit suicide at six times the rate of non-military females. We must do more to help those who sacrificed so much for our freedoms.”

Source of claim: Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst in a news release issued July 1 in response to President Barack Obama's June 30 signing of the Female Veterans Suicide Prevention Act.

Analysis

A 2012 Suicide Data Report, compiled by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, collected suicide data from 1999 through 2009 in 21 states.

The report found that veterans accounted for about 22.2 percent of all suicides reported during the project period. The report goes on to say, 'an estimated 22 veterans will have died from suicide each day in the calendar year 2010.”

On July 7, just one week after Ernst's news release, the department issued a second report, which updated the 2012 data with more than 55 million veteran records from 1979 through 2014 from all 50 states.

The updated report found an average of 20 veterans a day died from suicide in 2014.

The number is slightly lower than Ernst's claim, but we can't dock her grade as the report came out after her news release. The 2012 report was the most recent Department of Veterans Affairs data available at the time of Ernst's claim.

For the second part of Ernst's claim, a June 2015 Los Angeles Times article and an October 2015 Washington Post story dug deeper into the 2012 Suicide Data Report.

Looking at populations of 100,000, the suicide rate of women who never served in the military is 5.2. The suicide rate of female veterans in the same population is 28.7.

So that accounts for Ernst's claim that female veterans commit suicide at six times the rate of non-military females.

The report released this month found the suicide rate among civilian adult females was 7.2 per 100,000 in 2014, while the rate for veteran females was 18.9.

To compare, the suicide rate among civilian adult males in 2014 was 26.2 per 100,000, compared with a rate of male veterans at 37, according to the report.

Conclusion

Having served more than two decades in the military, Ernst's prioritization of veterans issues is understandable.

The GOP senator's July 1 claims on suicide rates among female veterans cited the most up-to-date information available at the time.

Data released just days after her claim provide updated and slightly different numbers, but the findings reinforced that suicide rates among female veterans - and male veterans, for that matter - are considerably higher than their civilian counterparts.

We give Ernst an A

for the two claims measured.

Criteria

The Fact Checker team checks statements made by an Iowa political candidate/office holder or a national candidate/office holder about Iowa, or in advertisements that appear in our market. Claims must be independently verifiable. We give statements grades from A to F based on accuracy and context.

If you spot a claim you think needs checking, email us at factchecker@thegazette.com.

This Fact Checker was researched and written by Mitchell Schmidt.