Longer deployments taking toll on soldiers

'The human psyche can only take so much'
Longer deployments taking toll on soldiers as combat stress, suicides, depression and family pressures soar
By Kirsten Scharnberg Tribune correspondent
May 5, 2008
FT. RILEY, Kan.—On this historic Army post where more than 7,000 soldiers have been deployed to Iraq on extended tours of duty, virtually everyone has a story about how the long absences have affected those back home.

The young wives who decide the lifestyle is too hard and pen "Dear John" letters before packing up.

The families that begin to unravel when a soldier comes home mentally or physically damaged from more than a year in combat.

The chaplains who work round-the-clock to staff new family intervention programs: for war-strained marriages, for suicide prevention, for kids missing their parents.

"The human psyche can only take so much," said Capt. Jeff Van Ness, a chaplain who returned from duty in Iraq just two weeks ago. "And a 15-month deployment seems to be where we really began to see some breaking points."

Just over a year ago, the Defense Department announced that the Army would shift from 12-month tours to 15-month tours to support a surge of forces into Iraq. Since then, there has been constant debate about how well that gambit worked militarily and politically.

But it is on Army installations like Ft. Riley, a sprawling base in the heart of Kansas, where officials are taking stock of the human toll these extended tours have taken on tens of thousands of Army families nationwide.

Suicide rates are up, with the Pentagon reporting that some 20 percent more troops committed suicide in 2007 than in 2006. Divorce rates, which have been escalating since 2003, remain at about 3.3 percent, up from 2.9 percent before the start of the war. Incidences of combat stress are soaring, with a new independent study finding that as many as 1 in 5 service members are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, a reality that deeply affects their families. And numerous posts, including Ft. Riley, are beginning to study whether there are correlations between deployments and domestic assaults, sexual assaults and alcohol offenses.

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