New research suggests that veterans may have a higher risk of committing suicide, The New York Times reported.

Researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the National Institutes of Health found that small groups of individuals within the VHA's patient population with very high, predicted suicide risk -- most of whom had not been identified for suicide risk by clinicians. Such methods can help the VHA to target suicide prevention efforts for patients at high risk, and may have more wide-ranging benefits.

"So much of suicide prevention is throwing things at a wall and hoping they will stick," researcher Caitlin Thompson, the VA's deputy director for suicide prevention, told The Times. "We haven't been able to target people, so having something like this is such a gift."

For the study, researchers created their suicide-risk algorithm by studying the VHA patient population from fiscal years 2009 to 2011. They randomly divided the patient population in half and used data from one group to develop the predictive model, and then tested the model using data from the other group. Each of the two study samples included more than 3,000 suicide cases and more than 1,000,000 control patients, USA Today reported. Researchers compared predicted suicide risk to actual mortality to assess the performance of the predictive model.

"As the largest health care provider in the United States, VA has the responsibility to continuously examine how our extensive suicide prevention efforts are working, and to identify critical opportunities for improvement in service to our nation's Veterans," Thompson said.

The VHA care system identifies patients as being at high-risk of suicide based on information assessed during clinical encounters. Researchers found that their predictive model was more sensitive than this clinical flagging, in the sense that, even in groups with the highest predicted suicide risk based on the model, less than one-third of patients had been identified clinically.

"This is valuable, because it gives the VA more extensive information about suicide risk," Michael Schoenbaum, one of the co-authors of the report, said in a statement. "If the VA can identify small groups of people with a particularly high-risk of suicide, then they can target enhanced prevention and treatment services to these highest-risk individuals,"

The findings are detailed in the American Journal of Public Health.