Time: "Is the U.S. Army Losing Its War on Suicide? "

Submitted by anthony on Tue, 2010-04-13 17:40

Article here. Excerpt:

'From the invasion of Afghanistan until last summer, the U.S. military had lost 761 soldiers in combat there. But a higher number in the service — 817 — had taken their own lives over the same period. The surge in suicides, which have risen five years in a row, has become a vexing problem for which the Army's highest levels of command have yet to find a solution despite deploying hundreds of mental-health experts and investing millions of dollars. And the elephant in the room in much of the formal discussion of the problem is the burden of repeated tours of combat duty on a soldier's battered psyche.

The problem is exacerbated by the manpower challenges faced by the service, because new research suggests that repeated combat deployments seem to be driving the suicide surge. The only way to apply the brakes will be to reduce the number of deployments per soldier and extend what the Army calls "dwell time" — the duration spent at home between trips to war zones. But the only way to make that possible would be to expand the Army's troop strength, or reduce the number of soldiers sent off to war.
See pictures of an Army town's struggle with PTSD.

"It's frankly frustrating that with the level of effort that we've put out there, that we haven't stemmed the [suicide] tide," General George Casey, the Army's top officer, told a House panel March 23. When pressed by a lawmaker the previous month on whether the Army was getting closer to solving the challenge, Army Secretary John McHugh was blunt. "Sadly, the answer is not much closer," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee Feb. 23. "As to why people take this step — particularly as to why men and women in uniform do — we're still in many ways befuddled."

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Comments

Another gender neutral report where the majority are clearly male victims, but Time only refers to them as soldiers.
Army Secretary even groups them together as "men and women in uniform." Hardy, har, har.

How many of the 817 do you really figure are women suicides?
Maybe we should be grateful there _are_ women included in this figure, because otherwise it probably wouldn't get any attention at all.

MAJ

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Submitted by digital_dreamer on Wed, 2010-04-14 21:49

the Army is caught in between a rock and the enemy here.

they can't speak the truth and not make feminists mad.

i'd put good $$ that at least 1/2 did it because of a woman.

when you are far away like soldiers often are, the MOST important thing to you is mail call. it was for me. you look forward to it like nothing else. amerikan women are not known for being true blue, especially when daddy is gone far away. the results are obvious.
combine that w/ the awful way male troops, and men in general, are treated by their country's legal system, and,
well, the truth just ain't in the cards.

don't forget, our phony c.i.c. is a devout feminist. he's even got the t-shirt. can't piss off the boss.

this has been a problem for a lOOOOng time.

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Submitted by daveinga on Thu, 2010-04-15 00:18

I know we should do both but would you focus more on keeping people from the military, if possible, or just focus on treating them better (help to make up what they lost). Doing the latter you need to be carefully not to honor them too much because what heroes do is die...

One thought I have is raising the minimum age, it would be easy to argue for 21. At that age you have learned more about functioning in normal adult society and it may be easier to return to such after service. You can also make smarter decisions and if you go into the military you may take better advantage of things like free college. I know that the military likes them "young dumb and full of cum" but if this helps the rest of their lives I think we could afford it.

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Submitted by fondueguy on Thu, 2010-04-15 05:01

Amongst civilians, men are about 80% of suicides, but women have a higher number of attempted suicides than men. I wonder how the suicide stats break down by gender in the military. I recall seeing an article in my VFW magazine about women veterans and PTSD. Although women are less than 3% of combat deaths and casualties, they actually have a higher rate of PTSD than men, as I recall. And yes they are getting special facilities just for women.

Wow, if men were less than 3% of d.v. victims instead of between 36-50 percent of victims, imagine how much worse d.v. shelter and services would be. Men have virtually no service or programs now. I couldn't imagine worse, but obviously, it would be far worse.

Institutionalized Acceptance of Violence Against Men Is America's Greatest Shame

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Submitted by MR on Sun, 2010-04-18 09:24