62% of Veterans Who Died by Suicide Were Not Receiving VA Care

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Veterans and service members can press 1.

The Department of Veterans Affairs published the 2026 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report on Sept. 30, 2026. It covers national death certificate data through 2024, and it carries a figure that is worth stating precisely: 62% of veterans who died by suicide in 2024 were not receiving VA health care in the year they died or the year prior. That figure describes connection to VA health care. It says nothing about the cause of any death.

The 62% figure, in VA's wording

VA's wording, on page 6 of the report: “62% of Veterans who died by suicide in 2024 were not receiving VA healthcare in the year they died or the year prior.” The same report records 6,488 veteran suicides in 2024, an average of 17.7 per day, and 174 fewer than in 2023.

Why the lookback runs two years

VA sorts veterans into two groups for this analysis. A Recent Veteran VHA User is defined in the report as a veteran “who received inpatient or outpatient care (in person or via telehealth) at a VHA facility in the year of interest or the prior year.” Everyone else is counted as an Other Veteran. The 62% describes veterans with no recorded VHA encounter over that two-year window, which is the measure behind VA's phrase “the year they died or the year prior.”

The rate moved in opposite directions for two groups

From page 40 of the report: “From 2023 to 2024, the unadjusted suicide rate fell 4.8% for VHA enrollees while rising 3.7% for unenrolled Veterans.” Those are unadjusted rates, and the report's age-adjusted analysis belongs beside them in a careful reading. The divergence is the part that carries information for community organizations. The group inside VA health care and the group outside it did not move together.

Four things the 62% figure does not describe

It does not describe cause. A veteran counted in that 62% had no recorded VHA encounter in the window, and the figure carries no finding about why. It does not describe eligibility, since a veteran can be eligible for VA health care and have no encounter in a given year. It does not describe care received somewhere else, because the measure reads VHA records. It is not a measure of any program's effect.

Changes from the 2025 report

Report edition	Data year	Figure	VA's published wording
2026, published Sept. 30, 2026	2024	62%	“not receiving VA healthcare in the year they died or the year prior”
2025	2023	61%	“not receiving VA health care in the last year of their life”

The value moved by one point and the data year moved by one. The wording changed too, and the change is an improvement: the 2026 edition states the two-year lookback in plain language, where the prior edition's summary line referred to the last year of life while its underlying definition already looked back two years. Anyone citing 61% today is citing a superseded edition.

Where to read the report

VA publishes the report, the national suicide data appendix and the all-cause mortality appendix on its suicide prevention data page. The care-connection figure sits on page 6, the 2024 totals on pages 8 and 14, the enrollee comparison on page 40 and the Recent Veteran VHA User definition in footnote 9 on page 43.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Veterans and service members can press 1.

Media contact: Nathaniel Free, chief communications officer, Neurova Labs. nathaniel.free@neurovalabs.com

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