Most Military Suicide Attempts Come Before Soldiers Ever See Combat: Study

The period of highest risk was just two months after starting military service

Most suicide attempts in the American Armed forces come from those who haven't been deployed, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Psychiatry.

The period of highest risk was just two months after starting military service, according to the study of more than 163,000 men and women in the Army from 2004 through 2009. It found that 61 percent of those who tried to take their own lives had not yet been deployed.

It's not precisely clear why suicide attempts — as opposed to completed suicides — go up at these times. Other research shows the risk for a completed suicide has little to do with whether someone has been in actual combat.

"They are transitioning out of training and into regular service," Dr. Robert Ursano of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, who helped lead the study, told NBC News.

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