L.A. Now Live: Does war deployment really increase suicide risk?

The most recent Pentagon data show that a slight majority — 52% — of troops who have committed suicide while on active duty were never assigned to Afghanistan or Iraq.

The numbers, from the years 2008 to 2011, upend the popular belief that a large increase in suicides over the last decade stems from the psychological toll of combat and repeated deployments to war.

Join us at 9 a.m. when we talk with Times reporter Alan Zarembo about what the findings mean on how experts view the effects of mental health, life circumstances and the pressures of the military on servicemen and women.

It is clear that some people enter the military with a predisposition to suicide and that stressors other than war are pushing them over the edge, experts said.

The Times interviewed relatives and friends of five service members who committed suicide without having gone to Afghanistan or Iraq. All were men who married young. In four cases, their relationships were over or crumbling.

They struggled with the direction of their lives and joined the military in search of purpose or meaning, their relatives and friends said.

Suicide was once viewed as the breaking point in a long buildup of stress, but researchers now tend to believe that some people have an underlying vulnerability that makes them more likely to kill themselves when faced with certain stressful situations, said Dr. J. John Mann, a Columbia University psychiatrist.

Nearly half the victims who were on active duty in 2011 had a failed intimate relationship, often within a few months of their deaths, according to the Pentagon. More than a third were facing administrative or disciplinary problems or some kind of legal trouble.

Jacqueline Garrick, who heads the Defense Department’s suicide prevention office, said service members have more contact with the civilian world than they did in the past — more live off base, for example — and therefore may be less insulated from its stresses.

Not only have the majority of suicide victims never been to war, but even among those who did go, fewer than a third witnessed combat.

The greatest risk is in a service member’s first year or two, officials said. In all, only 8% of suicide victims in 2011 had been deployed more than once.