Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

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Doug
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Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

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Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths, U.S. Says

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

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Post by Dardedar »

DAR
I think the same thing happened with Vietnam (58,000 American dead, 3-5 million Vietnamese).
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Post by Barbara Fitzpatrick »

I'm reasonably sure it's true of all combat situations, whether official "wars" or not. For one thing, the military seems to do an awful lot of 'let's pretend' - that the "guys" are OK after they get home. And I don't think they've been tracking things like this over time. How long do you track something like this? How many years down the pike do you consider a suicide to be 'war-related'? Daddy committed suicide a few months after his 50th birthday - just about his 30th anniversary of leaving boot camp/getting to the South Pacific Theater, and almost 25 years after he left active duty. He came out with a bad back, problems in relating to other people, severe clinical depression, and an inability to hold a job for more than 18 months. I hadn't seen or heard from him in 7 years by the time he killed himself - he died without knowing he had 2 grandsons - but his 2nd wife told me he'd had a stroke a few months earlier. How much of what could be tagged back to the war?
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Post by Dardedar »

Aaron Glantz | The Truth About Veteran Suicides

Aaron Glantz writes for Foreign Policy in Focus: "Eighteen American war veterans kill themselves every day. One thousand former soldiers receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs attempt suicide every month. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas."

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Post by Dardedar »


ON MEMORIAL DAY
Broken promises to our veterans


"Thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans are returning home only to become casualties of war - at their own hands. Suffering from psychiatric injuries, 1,000 veterans under Veterans Administration care are attempting suicide each month. Almost 40 percent of the young men and women returning from combat almost have proven mental health injuries that include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, major depression and traumatic brain injury.

But when they seek help, disabled veterans face a claims system so mismanaged and inefficient that they often must wait more than five years for any assistance. The Department of Veterans Affairs is choking on a backlog of some 600,000 unresolved benefits claims. Even after their eligibility has been established, thousands of veterans cannot obtain adequate mental health treatment. While they wait for the care they are owed, veterans are dying. About 126 veterans per week commit suicide. Vast numbers of veterans are living with mental illness, sometimes so severe that they are unable to work. Nationally, about 154,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and twice that many are homeless at some time during the year."

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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

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Sixteen American soldiers killed themselves in October in the U.S. and on duty overseas, an unusually high monthly toll that is fueling concerns about the mental health of the nation's military personnel after more than eight years of continuous warfare.

Sixteen American soldiers killed themselves in October, an unusually high monthly toll that has senior military officers worried about the impact of sending tens of thousands of new troops into Afghanistan. WSJ's Yochi Dreazen reports.
The Army's top generals worry that surging tens of thousands more troops into Afghanistan could increase the strain felt by many military personnel after years of repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The October suicide figures mean that at least 134 active-duty soldiers have taken their own lives so far this year, putting the Army on pace to break last year's record of 140 active-duty suicides. The number of Army suicides has risen 37% since 2006, and last year, the suicide rate surpassed that of the U.S. population for the first time.

See here.
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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by Doug »

Again!
See here.

Image

For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn't vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by Dardedar »

Doug wrote:Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths.
DAR
I saw that too but thought about how this is kind of statistically misleading (if people don't read carefully or notice this problem).

Unless I am missing something, the suicide number is from a pool of the entire military, a much larger group than the pool the combat death group is taken from. That's an important distinction that isn't made clear in that blurb. It's still an interesting and disturbing comparison, and has it's use, but it seems to me to suggest that the likelihood of dying by either is made to seem rather equal, when in fact, the ratio/percentage of those dying by combat death is far higher if you happen to also be in the group seeing combat.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
John Galt

Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by John Galt »

It serves the assholes right. Anyone who is so stupid/ignorant/immoral as to join the government murder gang and kill strangers on order of State deserves to die. See my song "Good Riddance" on YouTube. Also my recent essay "Deep Peacemaking" on ozarkia dot net.


Good Riddance - Hogeye Bill

The morning news to honor the dead
reported Billy Bob got shot in the head
They called him a hero and a right good lad
Defending our freedom from the forces of bad
If you believe this your as dumb as he
Murder overseas can't make us free
He got what he deserved
Let's celebrate in justice served.

Good riddance. One more violent bloody bastard down.
Good riddance. A blind believer in the supreme State put down.
The good ol' neighbor with the brainwashed mind
Who thought killing for rulers was oh so fine
The idiot bastard who got his gun
His brain matter splattered in a foreign sun
He got what he was due
May the rest of his ilk get blown away too.

To honor the soldiers who got blown away
to help a politician get a bigger payday
Drilled in government school nearly every day
Not to think for yourself but only to obey
So when a recruiter gives a patriotic pitch
About serving the rulers and the ultra-rich
The dumbshits buy the lie
So let's rejoice when the idiots die

Good riddance. One more violent bloody bastard down.
Good riddance. A blind believer in the supreme State put down.
The good ol' neighbor with the brainwashed mind
Who thought killing for rulers was oh so fine
The goose-stepping patriot who thought it was great
To murder foreign gooks on order of State
He got what he was due
May the rest of his ilk get blown away too.

They told Jim he was fighting for liberty
On a desert road he hit an IUD
His legs were blown fifty feet away
He died in agony his buddies say
He was willing to die for his holy State
He got his wish, isn't it great
He believed the statist crap
One less brute that's coming back

Good riddance. One more violent bloody bastard down.
Good riddance. A blind believer in the supreme State put down.
The good ol' neighbor with the brainwashed mind
Who thought killing for rulers was oh so fine
The goose-stepping patriot who thought it was great
To murder foreign darkies for the holy State
He got what he was due
May the rest of his ilk get blown away too.
May the rest of the dumbshit braindead lemmings who joined the govt murder gang get blown away too.

G/Em/C/D/
G/Em/C/D/
G/F/C/D/
C///D///
F/C/G///
F/C/G///
F/C/Dxxx
F/C/G///

G///G///C///C///
D///D///G///G///
G/G7/C/C7/
G/G7/C/C7/
D///D///
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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by kwlyon »

Damn son....you are diseased....
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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by Doug »

Darrel wrote:I saw that too but thought about how this is kind of statistically misleading (if people don't read carefully or notice this problem).
DOUG
It is not misleading in that it is not trying to suggest that the same people who are currently in combat siutations are the only ones examined in the survey. But it does show that the likelihood of suicide if you are a service member is greater than the likelihood of combat death. (And your non-combat exposure time is far greater than your combat exposure time anyway.)
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by Dardedar »

Doug wrote:
Darrel wrote:I saw that too but thought about how this is kind of statistically misleading (if people don't read carefully or notice this problem).
DOUG
It is not misleading in that it is not trying to suggest that the same people who are currently in combat siutations are the only ones examined in the survey. But it does show that the likelihood of suicide if you are a service member is greater than the likelihood of combat death.
DAR
Well, it still strikes me as misleading because it doesn't reveal that one group is huge, and the other group is a very small subset of the large group. That's a bit of apples to oranges. Which is okay, as along as the apples and oranges are pointed out. The number from the total military is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it is taken from an immense group that is perhaps 50x larger than the other group (just guessing). Note also, only 23% of troops in Iraq see combat for instance.

Wait, it's even worse than I thought. The large group also includes "veterans." Holy cow. That means it's pulling from a very large group indeed. It must be many many millions. Also, those in combat would also be included in the overall suicide group. So this is completely apples to oranges. There is no reason why there is any relation, this is just a made up correlation. The suicide number, for the total military, could be many times the number of combat deaths and this could be entirely inline with just regular (population) suicide stats! We don't know because none of this is even mentioned in this blurb.

I guess it's an interesting thing to say. More military suicides than combat deaths. But it really doesn't mean anything, and is rather misleading, without these further contexts which are not provided.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by Dardedar »

John Galt wrote:See my song "Good Riddance" on YouTube. Also my recent essay "Deep Peacemaking" on ozarkia dot net.
DAR
Curious. Has Hogeye always been the "John Galt" on this forum or is this a new thing? Hogeye never struck me as being as dumb as the old John Galt that would pop in from time to time.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Military Suicides Exceed Combat Deaths

Post by Doug »

WASHINGTON -- Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year – the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan – about 50 percent more – according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.

Because suicides had leveled off in 2010 and 2011, this year's upswing has caught some officials by surprise.

See here.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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