Army seeks help of AF, civilians on suicides

Army seeks help of AF, civilians on suicides
By Dan Elliott - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Sep 11, 2008 5:49:37 EDT

DENVER — The Army’s top medical officer says commanders are looking to their counterparts in the Air Force and in civilian agencies for ways to cope with an alarming increase in suicides.

“We work real closely with the Veterans Administration, who have for many years taken the lead in this,” Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “We’ve also looked across the services and at other models that have been more successful than our own.”

The Army’s suicide rate was 18.1 per 100,000 last year, the highest since the service started keeping records in 1980. It was 9.8 just five years earlier.

The U.S. civilian rate is 19.5 per 100,000.

Leading factors behind soldier suicides are troubled personal relationships; legal, financial and work problems; and repeated deployments and longer tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army says.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/ap_suicides_091008/%2e



uhc comment: “We work real closely with the Veterans Administration, who have for many years taken the lead in this”. Yea, the VA certainly has "taken the lead."