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Military Service Might Protect Against Depression

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on May 30, 2025.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, May 30, 2025 — The mentally scarred, deeply depressed combat veteran is an indelible stereotype promoted by movies and TV.

The post-traumatic stress and despair that some suffer following military deployment have prompted concerns that service members are highly vulnerable to depression.

However, the opposite might be true, a new study says.

General service in the military actually appears to lower a person’s risk for depression rather than increase it, according to findings published May 29 in the journal BMJ Military Health.

Military service is associated with a 23% lower risk for depression, after accounting for other potentially influential factors, researchers report.

“These findings suggest that military service may have protective effects against depression, contrary to some previous assumptions,” concluded a research team led by X.L. Shi of the Hospital of Shandong Provincial Corps in China.

It’s not unreasonable to think military service could foster depression, given the soldiers’ separation from their loved ones and the toll of combat, researchers said.

But the service also can shape personal growth and enhance coping skills, which might protect against depression, researchers noted.

For this study, researchers drew on data from five cycles of the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted between 2011 and 2023. Conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, the survey includes health exams and lab tests to check the health of participants.

The team evaluated nearly 26,000 participants in the survey, including more than 2,400 with military service and more than 2,500 with depression.

They linked military service to a 23% reduced risk for depression, after accounting for factors like ethnicity, marriage, income and chronic health problems like high blood pressure and diabetes, results show.

About 9.3% of all people surveyed had depression, compared with 7.5% among those who had served in the military, researchers found.

“While the prevalence of depression is notably high among both active-duty personnel and veterans, this large-sample cross sectional study does not support the conclusion that military service increases the risk of depression,” the team concluded.

This conclusion runs counter to both the perception of military service as a grueling ordeal, and to past studies that have linked service to depression, researchers noted.

“Previous research has indicated that the incidence of depressive symptoms among veterans is nearly double that of the general population,” the team wrote. “However, these studies often involve samples drawn from healthcare systems, which may not accurately represent the broader community.”

They continued: “The NHANES database used in this study provides a representative sample of the US population, confirming that military service may, in fact, serve as a protective factor against depression after adjusting for sociodemographic variables.”

There were, however, specific groups among service members who are at greater risk for depression, researchers found.

Female soldiers had a more than tripled risk of depression compared to men, results show.

Likewise, single soldiers were three times more likely to have depression than married service members. Divorce also nearly tripled depression risk, but the result was not statistically significant.

On the other hand, soldiers making a high income were 70% less likely to develop depression than those with low pay, and those with normal blood pressure had a 57% lower risk than those with high blood pressure.

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted May 2025

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