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Matt Collins
07-16-2010, 12:22 PM
More soldiers killed themselves last month than any other month on record. There were 21 active-duty and 11 reserve soldier suicides in June, including seven in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army reported on Thursday.




http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/army-sees-worst-month-for-suicides-ever-1.111237

Zippyjuan
07-16-2010, 12:44 PM
Year to date is lower than last year for active military.

The news came just weeks after Gen. Peter Chiarelli told Congress that the Army was encouraged by a 30 percent drop in suicides among active-duty soldiers this year compared to last year at this time. Although he said there was more to do, he thought the decrease showed the Army's prevention efforts were working.

But this latest data reflects more of the same. Through the first six months of 2009, 88 active-duty soldiers committed suicide. For this year, that number is 80. The trend is most troubling among reserve component soldiers; those deaths jumped from 42 to 65.

The June numbers for active duty suicides brought the Army back to January 2009, which was the first of two alarming months that sent the Army scrambling to create the Suicide Prevention Task Force and then to hold a service-wide stand down.

Col. Chris Philbrick, director of the task force, said there were no plans for another. “It’s difficult,” he said, adding that he didn’t know how else to describe the frustration. The numbers are especially disappointing because “we believe the programs, policies and procedures” are “having a positive impact across the entire force.”

Last month’s numbers, though alarming, don’t lead to any easy conclusions. “There were no trends to any one unit, camp, post or station” or job speciality, Philbrick said. The Army can only point to the continued stress on the force through nine years of war.


By comparison in the civilian population, the suicide rate for young adults aged 20 to 24 is 12.5 per 100,000 people. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-us-statistics-and-prevention/index.shtml

Wiki lists total US active military as 1.4 million http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_armed_forces so if the suicide rate was the same as the civilian one, you would expect to have 175 suicides in a year. At 88 for six months that would come out to 176 which is almost exactly the same rate as that for the civilian population.

nobody's_hero
07-16-2010, 12:49 PM
I really wish these guys and gals would stop committing suicide. Not only is it sad, but we could really use the help of people who took an oath 'to support and defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.'