I'm sure barry is proud.
Or, as those in the Mideast do:
(Note: my interpretation of that sculpture is distinctly different than that of the original sculptor)
Posted on 11/13/2009 4:55:54 PM PST by markomalley
Suicides reported among active-duty soldiers more than doubled in October, according to Army data released Friday.
The Army is investigating 16 potential suicides for October in comparison to the seven suicides reported to Army officials in September of this year. The Army is still investigating four of the suicides reported in September.
The newly released October data brings the number of reported suicides in 2009 to 133, 18 more cases than were reported between January 2008 and October 2008.
Among soldiers in the Reserve component of the Army, who are not serving on active duty, there were eight potential suicides in October, bringing the total number so far this year to 69 reported suicides among reservists. For the same period last year, the Army reported 47 suicides among reserve soldiers.
The latest Army suicide data comes as the service ramps up its suicide-prevention efforts.
"Stigma continues to be one of the most difficult challenges we confront," Brig. Gen. Colleen McGuire, the director of the Army’s Suicide Prevention Task Force, said in a statement. "The more we educate our Army community about the need to get help, the need to get it early, and that a full recovery is often possible, the less stigma we'll see."
The Army chartered the suicide prevention task force in March seeking to make rapid improvements across the full spectrum of health promotion, risk reduction and suicide prevention programs. The Army in October also started a program known as Comprehensive Soldier Fitness designed to give the same emphasis to psychological, emotional and mental strength that is given to physical strength.
I'm sure barry is proud.
Or, as those in the Mideast do:
(Note: my interpretation of that sculpture is distinctly different than that of the original sculptor)
What can we do? I guess we need to start facebooking these guys since FB is the only social networking site allowed. I have been in contact with one unit. The holidays will be rough. Any other ideas?
Its what happens when leadership is floundering and our best a bravest are left adrift, ruderless in a hostile sea.
Markomalley, I’m not sure what the breakdown per 100,000 is in the military vs 100,000 outside the military. It may be comparable or the military figures could actually be lower.
This subject matter is tossed out there about every year, and if I recall last time, the numbers were statistically insignificant when compared to the general public.
Of course one suicide per year in the military is too many to me, but it helps to keep things in perspective.
Right now there’s a decision being made, and the media just loves to have figures out there like this so that the left idiology can prevail.
I note this is ‘the Hill’, but it really does look like more of the same we generally see in the leftist rags.
If, factually, the number is on the rise, my view is that it is an indicator of morale. Along the lines of soldiers shooting their officers.
That is the disturbing part of it for me.
Indicative of who we have in office. This breaks my heart. :(
Let me know if you find a good idea. I want to try to help.
It's not the war, it's the CIC.
Vietnam syndrome perhaps?
oh geez. i guess im going to have to sit through more blabber sessions about it. we had to do two already this year. if you didn’t participate you were shot.
i can tell u this. veterans who try to get respect off post from women their age are just as likely to be met with utter disinterest if not downright contempt. for a young man on his 2-4th return home, who is doing all the work for these lame civilians who have had to sacrifice nothing, that can be an extraordinary let down. just my observation. that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own problems, of course. but i suspect for most of these suicides among single men, that’s one of the biggest issues. a lack of appreciation from among those in their own age bracket.
Me too, but this is a very stressful situation for the members of the military. If the numbers are in the same ballpark as the public, it would seem to me that we’re not seeing some kind of epidemic (per se) if you catch my drift.
That seems to be the emphasis. I think it’s somewhat unjustified.
As I said, even on suicide is problematic for me. I don’t to see any. Large bodies of people will include some people who can’t cope. That’s a shame. It’s reality.
Whatever can be done within reason to reduce those figures, I’m certainly for it.
I’d just like to offer up that it depends on where you’re looking too.
If you’re in a group that is God fearing and supports the nation, you’re going to get respect. If you go to the local bar/club and are dealing with the superficial women there, hell nobody gets respect from them. Don’t kid yourself.
There are a lot of people in this nation that admire you guys. Surround yourself with them and you’ll hit pay dirt.
My question, and sorry if it has already been answered, is what are the rates of suicide in the general population doing? Are they rising, or remaining the same? I ask because today I attended the wake of the father of my son’s friend who committed suicide. He was not military.
young E3s, E4s and E5s go to night clubs. trying to convince them to go hang out with church groups would be futile.
There’s other good things they can get involved in. They can join service clubs or volunteer. You can find some decent young women in hospitals and other organizations. You can join groups that share your interests.
I realize this isn’t going to sound flashy to young guys. These are still good resources.
One of the hardest things to teach a young guy, is that they are a valuable commodity. They don’t realize that there are quality women out there looking for a guy with backbone and character.
It only takes one.
They can take a few guys with them for moral support. But they have to resist the group mentality to act like a jerk too. Been there, done that. It doesn’t attract women, let alone quality women.
I suspect, but have no data, that the majority of these suicides are in Combat Arms, specifically the Infantry. My son’s company has had 3 in the last year. No common thread in them, other than they are in a hyper-emotional state of mind.
Well said. VERY well said.
Why would we believe the numbers? This was in Obama’s plan before the election. The liberals have been calling Vets mentally ill since Vietnam. This is SOP for Democrats:
June 10, 2008
Cocky Ignorance (Thomas Sowell)
Excerpt:
Because of the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up, Senator Obama says he wants the Secretary of Defense to tell him, swiftly:
“What changes will you make to provide our soldiers in theater with real access to mental health care?”
“What training has the Pentagon provided our medical professionals in theater to recognize who might be at risk of committing suicide?”
“What assistance are you providing families here at home to recognize the risk factors for suicide, so that they may help our service members get the assistance they need?”
“What programs has the Pentagon implemented to help reduce the stigma attached to mental health concerns so that service members are more likely to seek appropriate care?”
All this sounds very plausible, as so many other things that Senator Obama says sound plausible. But, like so many of those other things, it will not stand up under scrutiny.
What has been widely publicized in the media is that suicides among American troops have gone up. What has not been widely publicized is that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2028682/posts
It’s hard to put this in perspective without knowing the rate in the general population, and whether that’s changing too. I would suspect that it is.
But another part of it is just the rules of small numbers. Suicides, thankfully, are still fairly rare... even a couple or few more incidents make the percentages change wildly.
But a big change in the rate is still something that should get our attention, and investigation, to see if there’s anything that needs done about it.
Thanks for posting this. He’s right...as usual. Sobering reminder of how our soldiers are depicted by the left.
Please tell them for me that I pray for them everyday and that I want them home. Please be safe and take care of each other.
So the number of suicides were lower under the Bushes and Reagan ???
The rate of suicide among the military is now higher than the civilian population, 20.2 per 100,000 versus 19.5 per 100,000 respectively.
_____________________________________________
Do they count the civilians who commit suicide by crashing their cars ???
Could be statistically meaningless. It matters a LOT what the figures are for civilian vs military. Also may matter comparing most “similar: civilian jobs- such as police. I get very suspicious when the media (and Dems) go on about PTSD, suicide, homeless vets etc. ESPECIALLY after Fort Hood. This is the type of thing that should NOT be politicized,and the other half of the country likes to do that.
We’re also in the worst financial crisis since the 1930s... Uncertainty, stress, foreclosures, joblessness... The article mentions none of this, or any context. Take it with a grain of salt. Young men can be impulsive and risk-takers. Sometimes that means suicide. It is a rotten answer, but likely more honest than Obama’s report.
These things are out there and they're widely known. There also (so far as I know and have been told) no longer any restrictions on SGLI (life insurance) payouts for suicide.
I'm not suicidal, so I can't speak from first person experience, but I would imagine some guys being afraid of getting counsel because of "stigma" and the possibility if you get sep'd out you ain't paying the bills (you would lose some of your entitlements such as housing/food allowances for a married person this equates to 50% or more of your pay).....
End result is a permanent soulution to temporary problems and an SGLI payout of $400,000 to your benificiary, plus $12,000 death benefit for burial.
Not to mention, believe it or not, there are folks that fake these things... this adds to the stigma because "no one wants to be 'that guy.'"
As the son of a veteran, I can tell you my father fought honorably in WWII. I know little of his experience, because he spoke little about it. I can tell you that what he experienced in the battles of Belgium were a greater horror for him than what he experienced on D-Day. He had been awarded a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts by the time he came home in '45, yet he never considered himself a hero. From his perspective, he simply served his country when called, and that was the end of that. Period. He died in his late seventies of natural causes, and by all accounts, he died a happy man.
As the son of a suicide victim, the loss of my mother was something which I tried to prevent (more than once), but when it came down to it, there was nothing I (or anybody else) could have done to prevent it. At the risk of sounding negative, there is no such thing as attempted suicide. There are failed attempts, and there are cries for help, but if somebody is truly suicidal, they will ultimately stop at nothing to succeed. 99.9% of people who were actually suicidal six months ago are dead today.
My point is this: There are troubled people who might take a handful of pills, or superficially cut themselves, and as a result, are deemed suicidal, but did they REALLY want to die? Probably not. Those who did die, died more from self destructive behavior than from an actual desire to end their own lives. It is a mistake to confuse the two.
I don't make a habit of talking about the deaths of my parents, but this story (and others like it) intensely offend me, not only because they are based on ignorance, but because they are intended to undermine the war effort.
THAT is the greatest offense of all!
Something not mentioned on this thread:
We are overmedicating soldiers who seek help for depression or other emotional ailments. Instead of realizing that depression is a NORMAL reaction that goes with the territory of being in any situation where you are plucked out of your normal life and thrust into what can only be a completely alien reality that requires acclimation, they hand them pills instead of support.
The human spirit is designed to overcome these short term traumas. But psychologists and psychiatrists misdiagnose and catagorize a perfectly normal and HEALTHY response as a mental disorder and medicate these guys with substances KNOWN to be connected to bursts of rage and increased suicide rates.
When you take away a person’s cognitive ability to deal with reality and replace that with chemicals that do not allow your own mind to utilize the natural coping mechanisms it is designed for, the mind reacts by OVERREACTING and overriding the normal inhibitions which causes anger to become rage, and normal incidents of depression to become all consuming hopelessness.
This is well known by the medical community, but it does not stop them from overprescribing these drugs rather than allowing time for nature to take its course.
That goes for the general population as well. These antidepressants and synthetic tranquilizers are handed out like popcorn to anyone who claims to have a problem. They are prescribed to children who do nothing more than exhibit the normal childhood tendencies towards exuberance and/or independence.
There are too many cases of teachers and even parents who are too lazy or too unwilling to allow kids to be kids so we turn them into zombies.
These drugs are very dangerous to the soul of the nation. Removal of natural inhibitions towards controlling rage has led to murder suicides all over the land. Families are devastated by this. ONE person on these medications who is not dealing with a problem rationally can destroy tens of people in their immediate surroundings.
I would like to know how many of these people who commit suicide and multiple murders are on these drugs. It is a pretty sure bet that all or most of them are.
It's quite a bit higher than the civilian rate of about 11 per 100,000 BUT males (civilian and military) have a far higher rate than females, and the military (especially the Army) is very heavily male. College students have about 5,000 suicides a year, despite the fact that there are considerably more females than males in college. Everything I've seen suggests that the Army #'s, adjusted for males/females is slightly higher than civilian males of the same age cohort.
Criminality, on the other hand, is far lower for veterans:
"So, dear gentle ladies,"
"The bottom line for you is this: If that man beside you is not an honorably discharged veteran, he is two and a half times more likely to be a dope-dealing, bank-robbing, child-abusing, murdering rapist. Not to mention a terrorist."
"Let caution be your guide."
Full article at
http://stumpedagain.wordpress.com/category/news-and-politics/
scroll down to April 19th
Sounds reasonable. Hope this didn’t cause your son a problem. Best of luck to him from here.
Thanks AiT. Hope all is going great for you.
Thanks Donna.
Good question.
Thanks for the mention. The breakdown by sex, specifically males was an interesting breakdown. I hadn’t given that thought.
Did you see my stats from here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2386011/posts?page=9#9
Thanks for the story. I keep telling my brother, who is contemplating the military, and hearing stories of suicide in the army that is dissuading him..there are no do-overs in suicide. But those men chose to do it, no one forced them. That said, I would rather Obama have a grievous heart attack and drop in a cold sweat than have 1 member of our military die from suicide. It just isn’t right. When the country suffers, the military suffers. We really have no leader now. It is as if the Oval Office is eerily empty. And the VP of the country is a buffoon.
I don’t know how many prayers it takes to get God’s attention, but I try to send one up anyway when I can muster up the faith to do so, which these days is not often enough.
the military suicide rate is now over 20. It used to be 18 so they are worried.
The rate in young men 20 to 27 in civilian life is also about 20...
The rate for female physicians is 27 or higher.
The reason is the same: docs, cops and soldiers know how to kill efficiently, alas, and often hesitate to ask for help.
Oh Lord. We are blaming Obama for everything just like the Democrats did the eight years prior. We hated it then but now we love doing it???? What is wrong with us.
The soldiers think they are going into Iraq just to secure the oil for the globalist elite.
If you really want to fairly compare military suicide rates to those of the general public, you have to adjust the numbers to reflect the sex and age of the populations. Suicides in general tend to be weighted towards males and youth, so directly comparing the military vs. the general public tends to reveal ignorance or disingenuousness at work.
No, actually. I believe the higher suicide rate overall, whether in the military or in the general population is due to so many of the antidepressants and tranquilizers being overprescribed. I think it is also true for some of the “snap” murders.
It seems as if no one on this thread is even willing to consider it.
The soldiers think they are going into Iraq just to secure the oil for the globalist elite.
~~~
I don’t think so,,,
Some guys just can’t take 2-3 years in combat,,,
Tour after tour with no end in sight,,,
If we had a larger force we could rotate them every 3-4
months or so,,,
This and changing the ROE would help them to WIN,,,
Better F-16 than M-16!...
Thanks for your post.
What we need is to have a HUGE bonus for signing up so we can get MORE troops to reduce the rates of RE deployment..as that seems to be the biggest factor in the mental health issues of military.
The military doesn’t really want a draft...but if the numbers could be increased by putting our money where our mouth is, more would enlist, the deployments would be farther spaced apart and those that needed help would not be sent back.
Pols go on and on about ‘they deserve the best’ but don’t follow through.
Do they count the civilians who commit suicide by crashing their cars ?
Do you have any info or links to read about it?
______________________________________________________
No...
Most of them are probably just put down as “excessive speed” etc though...
It's Bush's fault! ; )
I see that the military suicide rate is nearly double what it was in 2004, and ever so slightly higher than the civilian population rate (for males ages 18 to 24).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.