WASHINGTON—Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on.

more stories like thisAt least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said Thursday.

Nearly a third of them died at the battlefront -- 32 in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. But 26 percent had never deployed to either conflict.

"We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute -- mainly the longtime and multiple deployments away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons and a force that's very, very busy right now," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general.

"And so all of those together we think are part of what may contribute, especially if somebody's having difficulties already," she told a Pentagon news conference.

Some common factors among those who took their own lives were trouble with relationships, work problems and legal and financial difficulties, officials said.

More U.S. troops also died overall in hostilities in 2007 than in any of the previous years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Violence increased in Afghanistan with a Taliban resurgence, and U.S. deaths increased in Iraq even as violence there declined in the second half of the year.

Increasing the strain on the force last year was the extension of deployments to 15 months from 12 months, a practice ending this year.

The 115 confirmed suicides among active-duty soldiers and National Guard and Reserve troops who had been activated amounted to a rate of 18.8 per 100,000 troops -- the highest since the Army began keeping records in 1980. Two other deaths are suspected suicides but still under investigation.

So far this year, the trend is comparable to last year, said Lt. Col. Thomas E. Languirand, head of command policies and programs.

As of Monday, there had been 38 confirmed suicides in 2008 and 12 more death that are suspected suicides but still under investigation, he said.

The rate of suicide continues to rise despite a host of efforts the Army has made to improve the mental health of a force under unprecedented stress from the longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the long and repeated tours of duty it has prompted.

The efforts include more training and education programs for troops and their families. Officials also have hired more mental health workers, increased screening to measure the psychological health of soldiers and worked to reduce any stigma that keeps them from going for treatment when they have symptoms of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and other emotional problems.

"More than any time in history, our soldiers and their commanders are armed with information about combat and its impact on psychological health," said Brig. Gen. Rhonda L. Cornum, assistant surgeon general for force protection.Continued...

"We still believe there is more to be done, and we are committed to maximizing prevention" and treating those who need help, she said.

Suicides have been rising nearly each year of the five-year-old war in Iraq and the nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan. The 115 deaths last year and 102 in 2006 followed 85 in 2005 and 67 in 2004. The rate of 18.8 per 100,000 last year compared to a rate of 17.5 in 2006 and 9.8 in 2002 -- the first full year after the start of the war in Afghanistan.

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. The Army said that when civilian rates are adjusted to cover the same age and gender mix that exists in the Army, the civilian rate is more like 19.5 per 100,000.

Other findings in the 2007 report included:

--93 of the 115 suicides were active duty troops; 22 were members of the Army National Guard or Reserve who had been mobilized.

--Five were women.

--In addition to completed suicides, there were 166 attempted suicides among troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and 935 over the whole Army.

--Young, white, unmarried junior enlisted troops were the most likely to attempt suicide.

--Firearms were the most common method for those who succeeded in killing themselves. Overdoses and cutting were the most common for all attempts.

--30 percent of all cases reportedly involved drugs and/or alcohol; rates were higher for failed attempts.

--The majority of people who committed suicide did not have known histories of mental disorders.

--Six percent of suicides and eight percent of attempts reportedly were among people who had prior diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

--Fifty percent of soldiers who killed themselves had recently suffered a failed relationship with a spouse, girlfriend or other loved one.

--Seven percent of those who killed themselves -- and of those who attempted to -- had served multiple tours of duty to the wars.

--The highest number of attempts occurred among soldiers who were in the second quarters of their tours.

The Army, which is the largest force serving in both of the wars, is the only service to release annual figures on suicides as well as lengthy reports it gathers every year by polling troops at the war fronts on mental health issues.

President Bush's buildup of forces in Iraq last year -- the number peaked at over 170,000 -- led officials to increase tour lengths to 15 months. With a drawdown under way, officials are terminating the longer tours and returning to 12-month deployments.

Officials said they hoped that would help ease the strain on troops. But a number of other efforts have failed to make a dent in the rising suicide rates.

Among those efforts are a bolstered suicide prevention program, as well as a program last year in which 900,000 troops were taught how to recognize mental health problems in themselves and others.

Since troubled relationships rate as a main trigger for suicides, the chaplain corps is expanding its "Strong Bonds" program to teach troops and families how to improve relationship-building skills.

The "Battlemind" program helps troops and family member on what to expect before a deployment and identifies problems to look for after homecoming.

Officials also approved the hiring of more than 300 additional psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals and have so far hired 180 of them.

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

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"We haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and reversible."-------Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq:

Cf. the rate of suicide among the civilian population?
>..."A total of 115 cases were recorded during the year, when American campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan intensified." Rough number of US Army soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan during '07, was about in Iraq in mid-July was 156,250 ( http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:...f+US+Army+2007 ) was about 25K in Afghanistan (15K under NATO command, 10K under U.S. command), so roughly, there were 185,000 in combat. Just for comparison sake I'll add an additional 70 suicides to make it 185 out of 185,000 or one suicide per 1,000 or .1% soldiers. Rate of suicide, stateside, for civilians, in the USA? http://www.policyalmanac.org/health/.../suicide.shtml
Suicide Deaths, U.S., 2000*
1.2% of total deaths were from suicide.
Ten times higher.

Some of the drugs they are giving are rumored to increase the chance of suicide. Plus the Army has psychiatric help if a soldier is thought to be suicidal. It does help the Army is shortening some of the deployments.

__________________
There shall ye find Light

Be thou faithful unto Death
And I will give thee a crown of Life

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.

So (and I don't feel like taking the time to varify if your facts add up or not -- irrelevant to what I'm about to say anyways) because the civilian sector may have a higher rate of suicide than the soldiers in the army, negates the fact that there may be a suicide issue within the confines of the army?

I still think the military attitude to mental illness has a long way to go, you find more often than not that those with PTSD get discharged on suspended charges of 'cowardice in the face of the enemy' or some such.

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“The goal of an Obama Presidency is to make sure we have bottom-up economic growth instead of just the old, tired, worn-out trickle-down ideologies that we have been seeing for so many years.”
Barack Obama

First, it was 115 suicides of soldiers, not just those deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, the story states that 26 percent of suicides were committed by soldiers who had never deployed to either conflict.

Second, you are comparing apples to oranges. The .1% figure you stated concerned suicides per living, deployed soldiers, while the 1.2% figure was suicides per deaths. So, unless the entire population of the U.S. died, they are not the same thing.

Reread the article and you will see that the suicide rate amongst soldiers is 18.8 per 100,000 (in 2007). The CDC puts the rate for the general population at 11 per 100,000 (in 2004). The Army has adjusted that figure counting only those in with the same age and gender group as soldiers and came up with 19.5 per 100,000 (I assume in 2004 as well).

However, we still can't really compare the two because they are from different years. The best we can do is compare the figures for the year 2004 and earlier, but the article doesn't present them for both soldiers and the general population for any year. It would also be best to use the rate among the general population that is closest, demographically, to that of the enlisted soldiers. This will eliminate error that may arise from differences in demographics.

The article also doesn't give any indication of the suicide rate among the general population (or those that demographically match the soldiers) rising or falling over those same years (much of that data, 2005+, isn't even available).

So, what can we take away from this article? Statistically, not much. It certainly appears suicides are increasing among U.S. soldiers, and it is easy to blame this on the long deployments, but the statistical analysis to back it up is severely lacking.

All that being said, it is troubling to see any suicides within the military or even within the general population, for that matter. We definitely need to keep focus on discovering and treating the causes of suicide.

Of course! You've got liberal members in Congress telling them that they are criminals. You've got liberal civilians protesting soldiers funerals and calling them terrorists. You've got the liberal media under reporting their successes and perpetuating the myth that this is an illegal war.

The list goes on.....

....or should I say the ones that are really the root of the problem.

The environment they have been placed into.

The seperation from families and loved ones.

The stress of you might be killed at anytime.

The thought of not knowing whether you are ever going to make it home to see love ones again.

I can guarantee you that those factors heavily outweigh the Liberal spin that you are trying to put on it.


E.Pluribus Unum

__________________
E.Pluribus Unum

People of power have NO good will and people of good will have NO power.

If you think Education is Expensive try Ignorance.

When I came home, I swallowed my pride and went to a shrink. She recommended some stuff to help with any anger and let me know that my dreams would go back to normal after a few months.

__________________
There shall ye find Light

Be thou faithful unto Death
And I will give thee a crown of Life

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.

... and, of course, you have absolutely no facts to back up a ridiculous assertion.