Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Looks like it will be another record year
Not that anybody outside of Tom Coburn wants to see this type of record set.
Suicides in the Army are expected to reach a new high this year, with 140 suspected cases among active-duty soldiers so far, Army officials said Tuesday.A horrible record and no pattern to help focus efforts to the most vulnerable. Bad, bad news, indeed.
This will be the fifth year in a row that grim statistic rose despite an aggressive military campaign to tackle the mental health stigma in the Army. This year's number already matches that for all of 2008. There were 115 suicides in 2007 and 102 in 2006.
These new statistics come as the military is investigating what may have driven Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who allegedly shot 55 people Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, Texas. The military has charged Hasan, who was set to deploy to Afghanistan, with 13 counts of premeditated murder.
Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff, said that the military wasn't seeing any trends that explained the rise. Forty suicides occurred in the first two months of the year. About a third were by soldiers who'd never deployed to war zones, and 40 percent of those who committed suicide had seen mental health specialists.
"We are almost certainly going to end the year higher than last year," Chiarelli said. "This is horrible, and I do not want to downplay the significance of these numbers in any way."
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