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Suicides among military personnel are found to happen before they are even deployed for duty, reports a recent study. The research also points out that the risk period is early in the career, around months after they join the service.

According to the research that involved 163,178 US Army soldiers comprising both men and women, who were on duty from 2004 to 2009, 61 percent of the soldiers that attempted suicide were not deployed for regular services yet. The risk of attempting suicides was high for two months after the soldiers started their military service.

As per the statistics revealed by the researchers around 9,650 soldiers attempted suicide between 2004 and 2009. About 86 percent of the attempts were made by men, in which 68 percent of the soldiers were found to be less than 30 years of age. The suicide rate was high among whites, high school graduates and those that were married.

Dr. Robert Ursano of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, said that the suicide rates are high during the soldier's' transition period from training to regular services. The study findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Psychiatry.

"We found the highest rates of suicide attempts were among never-deployed soldiers and those in their first years of service," Ursano's team wrote in their report, noted NBC. "That six-month time is usually the time most soldiers are taking a visit home. They are transitioning home and back again," he added.

Ursano also noted that suicides are talked much once they are completed but the fact is the completed ones are like the "tip of the iceberg." Unless there is a clear understanding about the risk factors that triggers suicidal thoughts among soldiers in the US army, the suicides cannot be prevented or intervened, according to Independent.

"Each of those has its own individual set of predictors and, perhaps, biological underpinnings," Ursano said when he explained about emotional status of the soldiers, noted NBC. "The idea that transitions are stressful is well-documented. You're more vulnerable not only to mental illness, but to physical illness. You are more likely to get colds. You are more likely to get infections."