The US Army recently released the statistics for 2008 of numbers of army suicides. Since 2004 the numbers have been increasing to now 128 active duty soldiers and 43 non-active duty soldiers. These 2008 numbers correspond to a suicide rate of 20 per 100,000 personnel. If you look at the suicide rate of the US population, it works out to roughly 19.2 per 100,000 people in 2005. Here are the numbers for the past five years.
These figures do not include soldiers who left service, however the Department of Veterans Affairs reported 254 suicides of veterans across all military services between 2001 and 2005. The Army has responded to the increase in suicide with suicide prevention training programs. They also developed a Battlemind program which helps prepare soldiers for the psychological stresses of combat. The Army has recently focused on decreasing the stigma of mental health problems with the hope that more soldiers will seek help when needed.
Although the numbers of army suicides don’t seem to vary much from the overall suicide rate for civilians in the US, it is still disturbing that the numbers continue to increase each year to nearly double from 2004. Additionally, it’s bad enough to lose soldiers in combat to enemy actions, but it seems worse to lose soldiers to suicide. What’s happening? Are they becoming so hopeless that death seems to be the only relief? Are they being exposed to images or experiences that they don’t think they can live with?
The National Institute of Mental Health is underway to research this issue. Hopefully they will be able to develop ways to reduce the risk of these suicides so that our soldiers can return home safely.
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