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By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter Latest Mental Health News

WEDNESDAY, April 1, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- In a study of almost 4 million American military personnel, serving in Iraq or Afghanistan was not associated with suicide risk, a new study finds.

The suicide rate among members of the military has increased over the past decade and seeing action in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed a likely culprit. But that appears not to be the case, said lead researcher Mark Reger, a clinical psychologist at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash. Rather, it is the separation from the service and readjustment to civilian life that plays a greater role, he said.

"Everyone wants a simple answer to the suicide problem in the military," Reger said. "As the suicide rate started increasing, we were also deploying people to Iraq and Afghanistan, so it was reasonable to assume deployment was causing the increase in the suicide rate."

But there is no data to support that assumption, Reger said, and "even though it's an easy answer, it doesn't appear to be correct."

Reger's group did find an association between suicide risk and separation from military service, especially for those who served less than four years, he said. However, the study did not prove a cause-and-effect link.

Reger explained that leaving military service can result in a loss of identity. "A lot of service members talk about the importance of being connected to their unit, having a sense of a really important mission. And when they leave military service, that is gone," he said.

People separating from the military are also often confronted with financial, family and social problems that can be extremely stressful, Reger said. For example, returning to civilian life means finding a job, not only to pay bills, but to give meaning to their lives, he explained.

And some of those who left the service early may have left with dishonorable discharges or because of a mental health issue, he added.

Service members with an honorable discharge had about half the suicide rate compared with those who did not have an honorable discharge, the researchers found.

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Serving in Iraq, Afghanistan Not Behind Rising Suicide Rates in Military: Study

The men push forward, smartphones flying back and forth as they enlist whoever is closest to take their photo with the swarthy figure at the front of the crowd.

When it's the next man's turn, he approaches with reverence, planting a kiss on the cheek or forehead of the muscle-bound man with the shaved head and jet-black bushy beard. An awkward pose, a quick snap, and it's on to the next acolyte, already in place.

Who is worthy of such attention? A movie star? A chart-topping singer? Nope.

He's Iraq's most famous Shiite militiaman, a fierce warrior whose nom de guerre Abu Azrael is an archangel of death in Islam. But the 37-year-old has another nickname: the "Iraqi Rambo."

He is the scourge of Islamic State militants, who last year rampaged across large parts of Iraq and Syria. He taunts and mocks the Sunni extremists on social media, saying he has dispatched them in droves with an arsenal that would satisfy any video-game aficionado: a scoped rifle, hand grenades and, when things get dicey, an ax or sword.

His Facebook pages have garnered well over 300,000 "likes," and his YouTube videos rack up hundreds of thousands and occasionally millions of views. (His presence at a recent funeral for a high-ranking militia leader almost derailed the somber proceedings.)

Convalescing in Baghdad after a battlefield injury sustained during the government's latest offensive on the city of Tikrit "a shell blast threw me off the armored carrier I was on," he explains as he nonchalantly gestures to the cast on his right arm Abu Azrael consents to a sit-down interview.

It's a tightly choreographed affair, monitored by a media team from his militia, the Imam Ali Brigades, that would make any Hollywood PR firm proud.

"When the Iraqi people came under attack, I decided to leave my work and become a warrior to defend them," he begins, describing himself as a "simple man who wanted to fight the evil of Daesh," the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. And though those on the receiving end of his lethal blows (not to mention taunts) are Sunnis, he rejects accusations that he's encouraging sectarianism.

Like your average action hero, his identity is shrouded in mystery. He acknowledges little more than being a "gentle father" to four daughters and a son.

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Iraq's Rambo is the scourge of Islamic State militants

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