Active duty Army suicide rate on record-setting pace
Published: July 9, 2009
Updated 4 months ago
Suicides in the US Army are on the rise with 88 suspected cases in the first six months of the year, compared to 67 in the same period in 2008, according to Pentagon figures issued.
The latest figures confirmed warnings from top US military officers that the number of suicides among active-duty soldiers this year was on track to surpass a record level set in 2008.
Last year 128 soldiers took their lives, up from 115 in 2007, amid increasing strain on Army troops serving repeated combat tours.
The 2008 suicide rate among active duty soldiers rose to 20.2 per 100,000, surpassing a demographically adjusted national suicide rate of 19.5 per 100,000 in 2005, the latest year on record.
Of the 88 reported suicides this year, 54 have been confirmed and 34 are pending investigation, the Defense Department said in a statement.
In about 90 percent of previous cases, suspected suicides have been confirmed, officials say.
“Every soldier suicide is different and tragic in its own way,” said Brigadier General Colleen McGuire, director of the Army’s suicide prevention task force.
“Although suicide can impact anyone, we’re finding that male soldiers, in combat-arms occupational specialties, between ages 18 and 27 are more vulnerable,” McGuire said.
The army has responded to the growing problem with more suicide prevention programs, efforts to screen soldiers for mental health problems and campaigns to reduce the stigma that prevents soldiers from seeking treatment.
The trauma of combat combined with the effect of repeated tours has led to a record rise in suicides across the armed services and particularly the US Army — which has carried the heaviest burden in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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They’ve been fighting now for how many tours in how many years? When they joined, they were sure they were fighting for Freedom in foreign lands. Many of them have now realized that they’re fighting a bullshit war for a bullshit bunch of lies to make bullshit plutocrats astronomically rich.
“Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of schizophrenia. In 40% of men and 23% of women diagnosed with schizophrenia, the condition arose before the age of 19″
“People with schizophrenia attempt suicide much more often than people in the general population. About 10 percent (especially young adult males) succeed.”
My brother in law was diagnosed shortly after boot camp at the age of 18 while he was stationed in Germany. He was given a psyche discharge and has collected a military disability check for the past 44 years. He goes to the VA for his drugs. Rides his bicycle around town and lives a good life. He’s never had a job. He votes for Republicans.
The lying bastards create these wars and hide behind gated communities, while we are thrown tid-bits to help these people. And, I’ll be damned, they vote for the rotten bastards and terrorize us, who try to help. When the military reaches their goal of creating an ape that has the mentality of a 12 year old-THEY WILL BE SENT TO FIGHT ON THE GROUND.
i dont think apes are good at counter insurgency
There are now 1.2 Million veterans in the VA backlog awaiting benefits, living in poverty and becoming homeless.
Methinks this will go beyond suicide before it’s all over.
What is beyond suicide? Just so we know when it’s almost over.
homicide
And the question that needs to be asked is, are we learning yet? I think if i were a jyhadist, nothing would please me more than to see the enemy’s troops offing themselves in record numbers.
But hey, they signed up for it.
Pretty cold, Phil. These soldiers were indoctrinated using the same propaganda we see on Fox News and at your local mortgage company. We have all been deceived. Any of us could self destruct at any time. We are all “signed up” for this.
Murdering civilians, women and children, will produce this. Invading counties on a false pretext will produce this. Propaganda will produce this . Fear and lies will produce this. The suicide rate is our only growing demographic.
And there is no end to it. In Chicago even the graves are being robbed for profit.
wow, you have linked the chicago rave robbers to the military industrial complex. love to see your evidence for that.
i dont remember invading afghanistan on a ‘false pretext’…. osama bin ladin blew up the twin towers… where is the ‘false pretext’ to try to capture him and try him?
oh wait, im sorry.. how silly of me. the twin towers were blown up, of course, according to the commenters here, by dick cheney and AIPAC. how naughty of me to disagree with the high prophets of the raw story comment boards. please forgive my transgression. all hail lord alex jones.
Decora,”world class sophistry requires no evidence.” I found this statement in the 9-11 Commission Report. Sometimes the grinder writes in code or parable form. It is unclear exactly which paradigm was effecting him at this writing because he does his morning writing in a cave.
I glanced at your posts following this and it appears that you too have mastered sophistry and perfected vitriol. Great to hear from you today but it seems like I’ve read this all before.
Try branching out, I hope you overcome your fear.
Thanks for the note.
grinder
Yes, it was a false pretext, we were told we were there to install a new government and get rid of Osama. In a few months Afghanistan wil have become our longest war in history and we’ve accomplished very little, exept secure a presence in central Asia which seems to be the real goal in all of this. When was the last time a nation was invaded to capture a criminal besides Panama?
I post here every day, I think about as much of Alex Jones as I do you, you both seem like morons. You’ll find more people of your mindset espousing the virtues of Jones, not the other way around. I talk to them all the time, you fit the bill.
For the money we’ve spent in Aghanistan, we could have just given each of the 33 million inhabitants $50,000 and they’d love us. After 10 years of bombing the shit out of civilians, and even our Afghan allies own families, there is nothing to win there nothing to accomplish. They will hate us for generations. I don’t know what your blathering about AIPAC about, people of your ilk are always blathering about AIPAC, why?
Our fellow Vets know about suicide & the causes.
Check the hidden VA outpatient rates…
Wall street
Military industrial complex
Multi-national corporations
Health insurance pharma complex
DNC & RNC have BOTH sold out the country in order to enrich themselves.
Gravel Kucinich Paul Nader
McKinney Ventura too
perotcharts.com
The Fed
AIPAC
9/11
every time i read some nutball 9/11 truther ‘AIPAC is horrible’ moron like you on raw story comment boards…. it makes _ME_ suicidal
For the mathematically illiterate:
Army suicide rate less than 1% higher than civilian suicide rate. EVERYBODY PANIC.
The main reason for all the suicides are the horrific VACCINES soldiers are forced to get. They all contain neurotoxins squalene, mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde, along with foreign proteins all of which cause auto-immune disorders. All of this affects brain chemistry and nerve cells, among other organs and systems. The government itself is killing these folks, many of whom were unstable even before entering the military.
God help America.
Everyone be forwarned…. the swine flu vaccines the government will be distributing in the fall all contain these same substances. Watch auto-immune disorders and even deaths skyrocket after people are innoculated. This is all PLANNED by the Illuminati to cull the world population by several billion people. To be forwarned is to be forarmed.
you know ideas like yours gained power in south africa. ‘AIDS is not caused by HIV’.
the result:
in countries like the US, tens of thousands of people have been using condoms, getting tested, and taking drugs that prolong their lives by years or decades. they have transformed a deadly epidemic into a managable chronic illness, somewhat like diabetes.
in countries like South Africa, tens of thousands of people have died needlessy, spread the disease because of ignorance, and thrown reason and evidence and rationality out the window.
people like you should be treated as harshly as we treat tobacco companies, for spreading lies and disinformation that leads to death, suffering, and massive social trauma.
i.e.
there were probles with the swine flu vaccine in the 70s, that lead to death.
there might be problems with the new one.
that doesnt mean the ‘illuminati’ is out to ‘cull the population’.
polio eradication and sallpox eradication have saved the lives of tens if not hundreds of millions of people. those were vaccines, not organic herbal bullshit that costs 50 dollars a pound sold by some hippie with no teeth in a ‘health food store’ that makes most of it’s profits from ‘medicine’ sales that have no proven effectiveness or safety, and would have been regulated out of existence for killing and injuring people if they had been produced by other industries.
how to make a raw story commenter:
1. 1 part brain damage
2. three parts superstition, hysteria, anger, and urban legend
3. sift out and separate any common sense
4. place in oven until any sense of reasoned debate, argument, or self questioning has been evaporated
5. sprinkle with nuts, and throw in trash. everyone knows that ovens emit ‘jew rays’ that make food ‘corporate’ and ‘fascist’. eat only foods that are cooked over an open flame, using organic charcoal from sustainably burned forests.
Decora, you are just too kind. Commenting on Raw requires far less that what you have listed. All it requires is an internet connection and some fingers, not necessarily ten of them. It helps to have read the classics and have a feel for history. Syntax, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure are very good to know about but not required and that’s about it. Opinions are OK if they are well reasoned. Not a good idea to quote scripture, particularly Old Testament infanticides and live sacrifice.
We are less than you think but more than you can imagine,
grinder
dammit, decora. I Represent that remark
Lol, best news I’ve heard all day. 88 dead, hey that’s a funny number considering the article on Nazi’s in the Army that’s being run, lol, 88, get it?! Ha ha ha.
There’s already at least 60 dead in Iraq today, 172 wounded. My sympathies never lie with fucking soldiers, ever, and seriously, you’d have to be a complete fucking moron to think that they were fighting for our freedom by any stretch. High suicide rates can be found wherever mentally deranged creeps gather.