Army Suicide Rates Hit Record High

WASHINGTON — Stressed by war and long overseas tours, U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year at the highest rate on record, the toll rising for a fourth straight year and even surpassing the suicide rate among comparable civilians. Army leaders said they were doing everything they could think of to curb the deaths and appealed for more mental health professionals to join and help out.

At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008, the Army said Thursday. And the final count is likely to be even higher because 15 more suspicious deaths are still being investigated.

"Why do the numbers keep going up? We cannot tell you," said Army Secretary Pete Geren. "We can tell you that across the Army we're committed to doing everything we can to address the problem."

It's all about pressure and the military approach, said Kim Ruocco, 45, whose Marine husband was an officer and Cobra helicopter pilot who hanged himself in a California hotel room in 2005. That was one month before he was to return to Iraq a second time.

She said her husband, John, had completed 75 missions in Iraq and was struggling with anxiety and depression but felt he'd be letting others down if he sought help and couldn't return.

"He could be any Marine because he was highly decorated, stable, the guy everyone went to for help," Ruocco said in a telephone interview. "But the thing is ... the culture of the military is to be strong no matter what and not show any weakness."

Ruocco, of Newbury, Mass., was recently hired to be suicide support coordinator for the nonprofit Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. She said she feels that the military has finally started to reach out to suicide survivors and seek solutions.

"Things move slowly, but I think they're really trying," Ruocco said.

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At the Pentagon on Thursday, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general, made a plea for more professionals to sign on to work for the military.

"We are hiring and we need your help," she said.

Military leaders promised fresh prevention efforts will start next week.

The new suicide figure compares with 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006 and is the highest since current record-keeping began in 1980. Officials expect the deaths to amount to a rate of 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which is higher than the civilian rate _ when adjusted to reflect the Army's younger and male-heavy demographics _ for the first time in the same period of record-keeping.

Officials have said that troops are under unprecedented stress because of repeated and long tours of duty due to the simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yearly increases in suicides have been recorded since 2004, when there were 64 _ only about half the number now. Officials said they found that the most common factors were soldiers suffering problems with their personal relationships, legal or financial issues and problems on the job.

But the magnitude of what the troops are facing in combat shouldn't be forgotten, said Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a former Navy vice admiral, who noted he spoke with a mother this week whose son was preparing for his fifth combat tour.

"This is a tough battle that the individuals are in over there," Sestak said. "It's unremitting every day."

Said Dr. Paul Ragan, an associate professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University and a former Navy psychiatrist: "Occasional or sporadic visits by military mental health workers are like a Band-Aid for a gushing wound."

The statistics released Thursday cover soldiers who killed themselves while they were on active duty _ including National Guard and Reserve troops who had been activated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the suicide rate for U.S. society overall was about 11 per 100,000 in 2004, the latest year for which the agency has figures. But the Army says the civilian rate is more like 19.5 per 100,000 when adjusted.

An earlier report showed the Marine Corps recorded 41 possible or confirmed suicides in 2008 _ about 19 per 100,000 troops.

The military's numbers don't include deaths after people have left the services. The Department of Veterans Affairs tracks those numbers and says there were 144 suicides among the nearly 500,000 service members who left the military from 2002-2005 after fighting in at least one of the two ongoing wars.

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On the Net:

Army suicide prevention http://www.armyg1.army.mil/HR/suicide/default.asp

Comments

[haramagoti]

Utterly tragic speaks to the extent of these completely unnecessary deaths, but what lies below the surface of the lives that we know took their own are the lies about those who the US military has covered up extensively. I am by no means anti-military, sensible military saves lives, doesn't cost them. I am by all means anti-deception, especially when it comes to these youth who've volunteered their very lives into a calamitous atrocity of a lack of political and military leadership scarcely rivaled in the history of military intervention ever.

The deception comes after the brutal loss of these people from their families, lies carried to those families in a sacrifice of dignity of the US military leadership that the truth that not enough was done to prevent the individual's suicide married to the truth that this US military leadership has shown itself to attempt to sacrifice the dignity of the reality of these soldiers' experiences themselves by shielding any and all from the fact of the much more numerous suicides than has been either reported or evidently shall ever be owned up to. Would anyone turn their lives over willingly to an institution that might later deceive their family, friends and the public at large about the manner in which you had died?

[haramagoti]

The truth that so many unreported suicides are out there serves two purposes for the military but has two main repercussions. The first purpose is to stir vengeance amongst the soldiers' fellow military personnel along with propaganda, also to the public, however subtly or bluntly, this is felt much more on the ground. Soldiers hear of so many deaths from so many places and details are simply not transparently exposed. The second is to paint the "war", if this experience can ever live up to that term, which i believe it shall not, to paint the soldiers commitment to the "cause", of which their has been no focus, in hues of patriotic grandeur and the grittiest of lack of incentive to compromise even to our basic understanding of how wrong headed the whole mess has been, it is painted against common sense.

The repercussions are that we lose, beyond the completely sacred lives of these kids, trust and faith in our military and political leadership. Eisenhower's parting wisdom is only wise if acted upon, otherwise his foreboding warning of the military industrial complex were simply useless sounds lacking any relevance of the keen thinking that went behind his having spoke them.

[KKojei]

War as a means for settling international disputes is by far the most wasteful, the most ineffective, backward and debilitating habit of any society. Never in our history a a people has war resolved anything completely. Today, thousands of years later the relationships among groups of people different in culture are still negatively affected by wars past. We must end war. It is impossible to grow food, create innovation, or otherwise function for the benefit of a society when war is raging. Can't grow corn in a warzone.