US soldier suicides the highest on record: army

struggle4progress

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Thu May-29-08 07:00 PM
Original message

US soldier suicides the highest on record: army

Posted 23 minutes ago

The US Army says 115 soldiers on active duty committed suicide in 2007, the most in one year since the service began keeping records in 1980.

Nearly 1,000 soldiers attempted suicide ...

Army officials acknowledged that long and repeated combat deployments were a major source of stress in soldiers' lives, but they found no direct relationship between increased conflict and suicides ....

"Mainly it is the long time and multiple deployments away from home, the exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons, and, of course, its very, very busy right now" ...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/30/2260084.htm?section=justin

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bbinacan

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Thu May-29-08 07:04 PM
Response to Original message

1. I know records weren't kept

until 1980, but I'd be curious to see how this would have compared on a per capita basis to previous wars.

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struggle4progress

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Thu May-29-08 07:19 PM
Response to Reply #1

2. Some current per capita info:

... In 2003, Army troops who had served in Iraq committed suicide at a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers. That number is high compared with a historical average of 11.9 per 100,000 soldiers, according to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which used Army statistics as its benchmark. In 2005, the Pentagon's survey of mental health in all branches of the military found that 4.9 percent of service members had seriously considered suicide within the past year - that's 4,900 per 100,000 who at least thought in earnest about killing themselves ... http://www.govexec.com/features/0307-15/0307-15na5.htm

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bbinacan

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Thu May-29-08 07:43 PM
Response to Reply #2

3. Thanks but I'm

curious about the rates during war vs. no war. How does each stack up historically? Are there more during war? My guess is yes. How would today's numbers compare with previous combat actions.

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