Journal of Community & Public Health Nursing
Open Access

Research Article

A Suicide Assessment of Elderly Military Veterans: Best Practice Guidelines in Long-Term Care

Department of Nursing, Olivet Nazarene University, 2014 American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA), Board of Directors (BOD) Student Scholar, 25 Strasma South Drive, Kankakee IL 60901, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Yvette M Rose
DNP, MSN, RN, Assistant Nursing Professor
Olivet Nazarene University, 2014 American
Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA)
Board of Directors (BOD) Student Scholar
25 Strasma South Drive, Kankakee IL 60901, USA
Tel: (815) 935-0447
E-mail: yrose@olivet.edu

Received date: December 12, 2016; Accepted date: December 21, 2016; Published date: December 28, 2016

Citation: Rose YM (2017) A Suicide Assessment of Elderly Military Veterans: Best Practice Guidelines in Long-Term Care. J Comm Pub Health Nursing 3:150. doi:10.4172/2471-9846.1000150

Copyright: © 2017 Rose YM. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Suicide in the United States continues to be a pervasive problem with military veterans. Sadly, effects of previous military service continue to plague many elderly military veterans decades after the war. Many years after the war, some aging elderly veterans, age 65 years of age or older, find themselves fighting a new battle. Suicide is a major cause of mortality worldwide, and research indicates that the rate of suicide is increasing among the military population. Suicidal ideation is more dangerous in war veterans in comparison to the general population because they know how to use firearms and they often own them. Little research has examined the sensitive phenomena of elderly military veterans and the risk of suicide many years after the war. This document serves as a guideline for assessing suicide in elderly military veterans in long-term care, taking in account the available evidence.

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