Army Suicide in the News (Again)

[Don]

Suicide claiming more Utah Guard members than combat
By Matthew D. LaPlante

The Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_11620245
Posted: 02/03/2009 06:17:00 PM MST

Since 2005, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the lives of two soldiers from the Utah National Guard.

Suicide has claimed 10.

In response to an alarming increase of suicide in its ranks, the military has hired a virtual army of social workers, mental health professionals and suicide-prevention counselors to work with its members. But for the fourth consecutive year, the Army has reported an increase in the number of soldiers it has lost to suicide. At least 128 soldiers took their own lives in 2008 - - --- and that number could rise, as 15 other deaths remain under investigation.

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

In response to the rising numbers, the Army will conduct a 30-day "stand-down" starting Feb. 15, which will include training for members to recognize behaviors among their peers that may lead to suicide.

Utah National Guard officials said they are awaiting guidance on how to conduct that program, but will continue education and training efforts that seem to have helped to decrease suicide among their ranks in the past four years.

The Utah guard lost three soldiers to suicide in 2005, four in 2006, one in 2007 and two in 2008. Officials said statistics from prior years were unavailable because the Guard's personnel officers didn't track suicides separately from other deaths until 2005, but at least one soldier killed himself in 2004 while on duty in Afghanistan with the 211th Aviation Battalion.

Since the overall count of Utah Guardsmen is small compared to the Army as a whole, the drop is not considered statistically significant. But Utah Guard officials said the local reduction is promising, and Adjutant General Brian Tarbet said he would not let up the fight.

"Our soldiers and airmen and their families give their all to protect us at home and abroad," Tarbet said, "and we will continue to do all we can as leaders to educate our members on how to recognize, report and prevent suicides."

Veterans advocacy groups say the military's data undercounts the problem. That's because it doesn't include people like Jason Ermer -- an Iraq War veteran who killed himself after leaving the service. The 28-year-old shot himself in the head in the foothills near his Ogden home on Dec. 31, 2007.

Ermer's mother believes that the Army abandoned her son. She says he was forced out of the service after returning from combat with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"He was heartbroken," Rosa Ermer said. "He went over to Iraq, he served his country with pride, and then they took everything away from him. They knew he had problems and they didn't take care of them. They just got rid of him."

Confronted with a wave of such stories and under pressure from Congress, the military has imposed a more rigorous screening process for separating members who may be suffering from war-related mental illness. Rosa Ermer said she's glad to know that the military is beginning to address the problem.

Utah Guard spokesman Hank McIntire said there's no way to know how many Utah soldiers might have killed themselves after leaving the military.

"There's not a formal process in place," he said, "We'd certainly like to know, but there is no form or official way."

mlaplante@sltrib.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


And from a few days ago:

Suicides continue alarming rise in military
Defense conference to tackle troubling persistence of untreated problems

By Courtney Kube and Alex Johnson
NBC News and msnbc.com
updated 3:33 p.m. MT, Wed., Jan. 28, 2009

[i]WASHINGTON

[blueeyes]

don't even know what to say to that.... lovely suicide...

[JP]

Army suicide, just a media tool to grab attention. I wonder why they don't go ahead and make captions for all suicides. Military, police, actor/actresses and sports figure get the media to go bonkers over suicides.

[KapitanSparrow]

I think the point is these men and women are sucked dry while in the service and kicked aside when they leave.

[blueeyes]

Army suicide, just a media tool to grab attention. I wonder why they don't go ahead and make captions for all suicides. Military, police, actor/actresses and sports figure get the media to go bonkers over suicides.

JP that is a bit cold hearted.

[JP]

JP that is a bit cold hearted.

No, cold-hearted is the media making a spectacle of these people deaths. With the group I just mentioned, there is no rest in peace.

[FROGGER]

Army suicide, just a media tool to grab attention. I wonder why they don't go ahead and make captions for all suicides. Military, police, actor/actresses and sports figure get the media to go bonkers over suicides.

Suicide in general is a very selfish act regardless of who is commiting it... It leaves a wake for those remaining behind... I agree they are using it as a tool for attention..

[FROGGER]

? Double post

[Don]

Army suicide, just a media tool to grab attention. I wonder why they don't go ahead and make captions for all suicides. Military, police, actor/actresses and sports figure get the media to go bonkers over suicides.

At least 128 Army soldiers took their own lives last year -- an estimated suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000, a sharp increase from the 2007 rate of 16.8.

Army sucide rates are higher that the general population and higher than corresponding age groups in the general population. This leads people to question the cause, and there clearly is a cause.

I would have expected a bit more sympathy or understanding at least, from someone who claims a military background. I guess you're just a big tough guy who won't let this affect him, right?

[FROGGER]

Army suicide, just a media tool to grab attention. I wonder why they don't go ahead and make captions for all suicides. Military, police, actor/actresses and sports figure get the media to go bonkers over suicides.

At least 128 Army soldiers took their own lives last year -- an estimated suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000, a sharp increase from the 2007 rate of 16.8.

Army sucide rates are higher that the general population and higher than corresponding age groups in the general population. This leads people to question the cause, and there clearly is a cause.

I would have expected a bit more sympathy or understanding at least, from someone who claims a military background. I guess you're just a big tough guy who won't let this affect him, right?

I assume you are meaning that the current war is the cause... right, at least the trib would lead the reader to beleive this...

lets try a different source.....

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=5502649

Utah Guard Lt. Col. Hank McIntire says it's not just those that have been traumatized by war.

"In fact, the numbers are showing that people who haven't been deployed are the ones that are fitting that profile more than the ones who have been deployed," he said.

I love how the trib left this part out... lets all try hard not to be sheeple ok...

[Don]

Army suicide, just a media tool to grab attention. I wonder why they don't go ahead and make captions for all suicides. Military, police, actor/actresses and sports figure get the media to go bonkers over suicides.

At least 128 Army soldiers took their own lives last year -- an estimated suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000, a sharp increase from the 2007 rate of 16.8.

Army sucide rates are higher that the general population and higher than corresponding age groups in the general population. This leads people to question the cause, and there clearly is a cause.

I would have expected a bit more sympathy or understanding at least, from someone who claims a military background. I guess you're just a big tough guy who won't let this affect him, right?

I assume you are meaning that the current war is the cause... right, at least the trib would lead the reader to beleive this...

lets try a different source.....

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=5502649

Utah Guard Lt. Col. Hank McIntire says it's not just those that have been traumatized by war.

"In fact, the numbers are showing that people who haven't been deployed are the ones that are fitting that profile more than the ones who have been deployed," he said.

I love how the trib left this part out... lets all try hard not to be sheeple ok...

It is a fact that the already statistically high suicide rate in the Army has increased every year since the beginning of the war in Iraq. It seems clear that there is some correlation between the two.

I wonder if the Army or the public affairs officer for the Ut Guard might have a reason to say they are not related?

[RedMan]

Suicide is a single alarming component.
But domestic violence is another scary issue.
I know an ADA in Co Springs. She tells me that the domestic violence issue skyrockets with every returning wave of soldiers.

[adamsco]

JP, are you purposefuly obnoxious and inflamitory? I'm thinking maybe you can't help it.

I'll qualify what I say by informing that I'm personally connected to one of the Utah Guard's suicides and over the course of a combat tour and havind led troops in the years since I know what kinds of mental distress and hardship this creates for warriors and their families. This issue is in the media because it should be and I hope it "grabs the attention" that it deserves.

Frogger. Nice. Blame the victim. Suicide is the result of a mental pathology. Healthy people want to survive, not die. In the cases of many of these vets, these mental conditions can be directly linked to combat exposures .

And Bob Lonsberry (did anyone hear that D-bag's radio show this morning?), PTSD is not a condition invented by Army shrinks for job security and the increase in Army suicides is not a result of a softer, feelings-based military.

Thanks for the post Don, and thanks to the media outlets reporting this because they're bringing attention to a very important issue.

[JP]

I would have expected a bit more sympathy or understanding

RIF Don I do fully understand and I do have sympathy for the men and women in uniform. My point is the news media making a spectacle over these losses. Is there a link between these losses and the war? Sure their could, but to know the reasons behind each is something that people should not be speculating on. Assuming is just wrong. Are we talking they are committing it because of what they experienced over there, their families falling apart, their significant others leaving? There are a whole host of possibilities and purely speculating on why one might take one's own life is just wrong, no matter how you would like to make headlines.
There are jobs that have a higher suicide rate than others.

[adamsco]

I would have expected a bit more sympathy or understanding

RIF Don I do fully understand and I do have sympathy for the men and women in uniform. My point is the news media making a spectacle over these losses. Is there a link between these losses and the war? Sure their could, but to know the reasons behind each is something that people should not be speculating on. Assuming is just wrong. Are we talking they are committing it because of what they experienced over there, their families falling apart, their significant others leaving? There are a whole host of possibilities and purely speculating on why one might take one's own life is just wrong, no matter how you would like to make headlines.
There are jobs that have a higher suicide rate than others.

It goes something like this JP. 1) A trend is discovered 2) They gather data on the problem. 3) They form a hypothesis patterned after Mill's canons of inductive reasoning . 4) They conduct studies to determine possible causality and write it up.

The news media is reporting it because study data has been released and people want to hear about it. I'm not sure how much you want to really call that speculation. The linkage it pretty clear. There is a clear relationship between what's going on right now and the increase in Suicudes among servicemembers. As Don pointed out, the correlation is clear--with a positive relationship between numbers deployed over the past few years and suicudes reported. The problems may be manifest in family issues, money issues, substance abuse, traumatic stress, an a whole host of other mechainisms which lead right back to the cause--deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is also evidence of underreporting of suicide outcomes that occur during overseas deployments in an attempt to mask families and the public from the realities of the situation.

You can't call these data mere assumptions and media speculation.

[Don]

The issue is compounded by the fact that plenty of guys come home from war with a desire to be done with the Army; they either ETS or AWOL their way out and then no one is keeping track of them. There are no statistics showing alcohol or drug abuse, spouce abuse, divorce rates, psycological disorders or suicide rates among these guys who have left the service.
Actually, often these Post Tramatic Stress Disorder related issues present symtoms that the Army considers behavior problems so the Army hurries to push these undicipined soldiers out.

[JP]

I'll go back and call it what it was...Shell Shock. Obviously people handle stress differently and some can as others cannot. But, you can also throw in here Don the fact that you're not trained to be weak. A solider that is having problems handling what he has been subjected to will often keep it within, if let out he might feel he was being weak. So, when we see a solider "Cliff Tossing" puppies, he just maybe asking for help without seeming weak; subconsciously. He knows it will grab attention and if a superior finds out about questionable behavior, hopefully they'll send that solider to be looked at. There just maybe a underlying problem trying to get out and if it isn't addressed, it very well may have a tragic end.

[KapitanSparrow]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One week after the U.S. Army announced record suicide rates among its soldiers last year, the service is worried about a spike in possible suicides in the new year.

If reports of suicides are confirmed, more soldiers will have taken their lives in January than died in combat.

The Army said 24 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in January alone -- six times as many as killed themselves in January 2008, according to statistics released Thursday.

The Army said it already has confirmed seven suicides, with 17 additional cases pending that it believes investigators will confirm as suicides for January.

If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January.

"This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on."

Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard, said that the long, cold months of winter could be a major contributor to the January spike.

"There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold," she said.

But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers.

Those who are seeking mental-health care often have their treatment disrupted by deployments. Deployed soldiers also have to deal with the stress of separations from families.

"When people are apart you have infidelity, financial problems, substance abuse and child behavioral problems," Platoni said. "The more deployments, the more it is exacerbated."

Platoni also said that while the military has made a lot of headway in training leaders on how to deal with soldiers who may be suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, "there is still a huge problem with leadership who shame them when they seek treatment."

The anti-depressants prescribed to soldiers can have side effects that include suicidal thoughts. Those side effects reportedly are more common in people 18 to 24.

Concern about last month's suicide rate was so high, Congress and the Army leadership were briefed. In addition, the Army took the rare step of releasing data for the month rather than waiting to issue it as part of annual statistics at the end of the year.

In January 2008, the Army recorded two confirmed cases of suicides and two other cases it was investigating.

Last week, in releasing the report that showed a record number of suicides in 2008, the Army said it soon will conduct servicewide training to help identify soldiers at risk of suicide.

The program, which will run February 15 through March 15, will include training to recognize behaviors that may lead to suicide and instruction on how to intervene. The Army will follow the training with another teaching program, from March 15 to June 15, focused on suicide prevention at all unit levels.

The 2008 numbers were the highest annual level of suicides among soldiers since the Pentagon began tracking the rate 28 years ago. The Army said 128 soldiers were confirmed to have committed suicide in 2008, and an additional 15 were suspected of having killed themselves. The statistics cover active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves.

The Army's confirmed rate of suicides in 2008 was 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers. The nation's suicide rate was 19.5 per 100,000 people in 2005, the most recent figure available, Army officials said last month.

Suicides for Marines were also up in 2008. There were 41 in 2008, up from 33 in 2007 and 25 in 2006, according to a Marines report.

In addition to the new training, the service has a program called Battlemind, intended to prepare soldiers and their families to cope with the stresses of war before, during and after deployment. It also is intended to help detect mental-health issues before and after deployments.

The Army and the National Institute of Mental Health signed an agreement in October to conduct research to identify factors affecting the mental and behavioral health of soldiers and to share strategies to lower the suicide rate. The five-year study will examine active-duty, National Guard and reserve soldiers and their families.