Trends in suicide rates among military conscripts.

The purpose of this study was to analyse the trends in suicide rates among conscripts in Finland and to compare them with suicide rates in men of the same age in the general population. The suicide rates among conscripts slightly increased from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s, but this rise was less marked than among young men in the population as a whole. In the 1970s and 1980s, the suicide mortality among conscripts was half of that among civilian men of the same age in the population. The implications for suicide prevention are discussed.