Loneliness and Suicide Risk in U.S. Veterans: A Scoping Review

U.S. military veterans face a higher risk of suicide than the general population, underscoring the need to identify risk factors and refine intervention targets. Although loneliness has been associated to suicide risk in civilians, no comprehensive review has examined this relationship among veterans. This scoping review summarizes methods and findings on loneliness and suicide risk in U.S. veterans, emphasizing psychiatric and psychological correlates and potential mediators.

PubMed, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, CINAHL, Scopus, and PTSDpubs were searched for empirical studies of U.S. veterans measuring loneliness and suicide risk.

Twenty studies met inclusion criteria. Ten found loneliness to be a significant predictor of suicide risk. Most relied on self-report measures of loneliness (n = 16) and suicide risk (n = 15), others used qualitative analysis of crisis line calls (n = 4) and medical record abstraction (n = 1). Nine studies examined additional psychological or psychiatric variables, but none tested them as mediators. Samples were predominantly male and older (age > 55), limiting generalizability.

Loneliness and suicide risk are significantly related in U.S. veterans. However, research remains limited and reliant on retrospective self-reports, vulnerable to memory biases. Future research should examine other research methods and younger, diverse samples.