Security Brief: Army suicides soared in June

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you can feel proud that you are better informed than the Department of Defense is when it comes to PTSD and suicides. You know what they keep claiming has turned out to be a lot less than promised and that the numbers, no matter how much money they toss at it, does little good. When we have so many calling the suicide prevention hotline, that screams of a need not being met. They wouldn't reach that point of hopelessness if they were getting the help they needed in the first place.

The DOD won't listen to people like me trying to find real answers and using common sense instead of big fat budgets to be fed. They keep asking the same people, getting the same answers and making the same mistakes over and over again. The results are proven in the suicide data.

How many times have you read about an expert on this blog knowing what needs to be done? How many times have you heard of that expert being asked by the DOD for any help? It doesn't happen. How many times have you heard about the House or Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees asking for solutions instead of asking to hear the same stories from the same people after they lost someone due to suicide instead of talking to people who managed somehow to save lives so their stories can be repeated instead of repeating the heartache of losing someone to suicide?

None of what we're seeing has to happen but it will keep happening as long as they stay in a bad cycle like repeats of Groundhog Day. There are great things on PTSD happening all over the country but everyone in charge has their heads in a box refusing to step out and take a look at what has worked. I read about the lives lost and wonder how many could have been saved if they would have listened when the research began over 30 years ago.

Security Brief: Army suicides soared in June
More U.S. soldiers killed themselves last month than in recent Army history, according to Army statistics released Thursday, confounding officials trying to reverse the grim trend.

The statistics show that 32 soldiers killed themselves in June, the highest number in a single month since the Vietnam era.

Twenty-one of them were on active duty while 11 were in the National Guard or Army Reserve in an inactive status. Seven of those soldiers killed themselves while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Army numbers.

The spike comes after the monthly suicide numbers had dropped following a January high of 28, and Army officials admit they still haven't answered the question of why troops are committing suicide at a record rate. "There were no trends to any one unit, camp, post or station," said Col. Chris Philbrick, head of the Army's suicide prevention task force. "... I have no silver bullet to answer the question why." He said he could offer only what he has said before: "Continued stress on the force and the opportunities we have been facing in terms of the challenges in the Army continue to cause these events to take place."

Including the June numbers, a total of 145 soldiers have killed themselves this year, more than half of the total number for all of 2009, according to Army statistics. In 2009, a record-breaking year for suicides in the service, 245 soldiers killed themselves.
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Security Brief: Army suicides soared in June