Here are some rough facts I just picked up off the internet, a sanity check. This is not an analysis.
Call the population of the US 318,000,000.
There are 38,000 suicides per year.
That is 0.012%.
There are roughly 2,200,000 veterans in the US.
If 22 commit suicide per day that’s 8030.
That’s 0.037%
If the fact is true, veterans commit suicide around 3 times more often.
the confounding factor is that the veteran cohort contains a large amount of 50+ males who are the group most likely to complete suicide. If the cohort was made up of group that more reflected the general population I am sure those stats would drop considerably