T
HUFFINGTON
09.01-08.13
INVISIBLE CASUALTIES
WASHINGTON
THE GOOD NEWS: most people with military service never consider
suicide. Contrary to popular perception, there is no “epidemic” of military-related suicides — even though President Barack Obama used the
word in a speech this summer at the Disabled American Veterans Convention. Among those few whose lives do spiral down toward darkness
and despair, the vast majority never take that irrevocable step.
The bad news: the number of military and veteran suicides is rising,
and experts fear it will continue to rise despite aggressive suicide prevention campaigns by the government and private organizations.
The Pentagon and Department
of Veterans Affairs (VA), already
struggling to meet an increasing demand from troops and veterans for
mental health services, are watching the suicide rates, and the growing number of those considered “at
risk” of suicide, with apprehension.
“It really is extremely concerning,” said Caitlin Thompson, a
VA psychologist and clinical care
coordinator at the national crisis
line for the military and veterans.
The warning signs of an approaching wave of suicides are
unmistakable.
— While the rate of suicides has
traditionally been lower for the
military ranks than for civilians,
that trend has begun to reverse.
— The number of suicides among
active-duty troops of all services
remains relatively low, at 350 last
year, Pentagon data show. But that
number has more than doubled
since 2001, while in the Army’s
active-duty ranks, suicides have tripled during the same period, from
52 soldiers in 2001 to 185 last year.
— Roughly half of active-duty
troops who die by suicide never
served in Iraq or Afghanistan. But
there is growing evidence that war
trauma weighs heavily on those
who did. In one indication of deep
emotional stress, the suicide rate
among U.S. troops deployed to Iraq
between 2004 and 2007, a period
of intensified fighting, jumped
from 13.5 to 24.8 per 100,000, according to a report issued in 2009
by the Army surgeon general.
— Some 8,00