Summary: | Introduction: Suicide is the leading cause of death among active veteran military personnel. Despite this, there are few therapies that address suicidality, and the development of new treatments is limited. In recent years, the use of cognitive therapy has been proposed.
Objective: Analyze the efficacy of cognitive therapy in preventing suicide in military veterans.
Development: A review was carried out following the PRISMA regulations. The PubMed, Cinahl, PsycINFO, SPORTDiscus, Academic Search Complete, Lilacs, IBECS, CENTRAL, SciELO, and WOS databases were consulted. The Cochrane tool was used to assess the risk of bias and the quality of the evidence was assessed with GRADE. Cognitive therapy is effective in preventing suicide among military veterans. The total number of participants in the review was 668 individuals. The total number of sessions ranged from 6 to 10 and the follow-up of the program varied from 3 to 24 months.
Conclusions: Cognitive therapy prevents suicide attempts among military veterans with suicidal ideation or a recent suicide attempt. It also improves the quality of life of service members and their families, as well as their sleep pattern. It reduces depression, hopelessness, post-traumatic stress, symptom severity, the number of suicides and psychiatric hospitalizations.
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