Racial and Ethnic Differences in Deaths by Suicide, Drug Overdose, and Opioid-Related Overdose in a National Sample of Military Members With Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, 1999-2019.

The study did not include a comparison group of military members without a traumatic brain injury, so it cannot determine if these mortality risks are higher than in the general military population. Participants who had a mild injury as their first diagnosis were not excluded if they later had a more severe injury, which could affect the risk profile. The study only looked at injuries that occurred during military service and did not account for head injuries sustained before or after service. Some diagnostic codes used to identify mild traumatic brain injury were non-specific and may have included head injuries that were not actually brain trauma. Small numbers of deaths in some racial and ethnic groups meant the researchers could not calculate reliable rates or adjust for age and sex for those specific groups. The category for self-identified Other was limited to a single choice, meaning the specific racial or ethnic backgrounds of this highest-risk group remain unknown.

The work was conducted as part of operational program evaluation and quality improvement efforts within the Department of Defense and Veterans Health Administration. It was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Government.

Do not assume the Other group represents a single specific race or ethnicity, as the data was collected using constrained single-choice categories that did not allow for multiple races. Do not interpret these findings as showing that mild traumatic brain injury causes higher mortality than in service members without head injuries, because the study did not include a comparison group of people without traumatic brain injury.