Report urges new office for suicide prevention

Report urges new office for suicide prevention

By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Aug 25, 2010 9:14:15 EDT

The Defense Department should investigate military suicides more thoroughly and create a new top-level Pentagon office for suicide prevention, according to a new report from a congressional task force.

The military should “pattern suicide investigations on aviation accident investigations, and use the safety investigation process as a model to standardize suicide investigations,” said Bonnie Carroll, co-chair for the task force Congress created last year to examine the spike in military suicides.

The task force’s 14 members — seven military members and seven civilians — spent a year visiting installations and studying military suicides and the efforts in place to prevent them.

Their report, released Tuesday, includes 76 specific recommendations that include increasing troops’ dwell time, adding full-time suicide prevention coordinators and putting suicide prevention elements into broader military education programs.

A new office under the Office of the Secretary of Defense should help coordinate the tracking of suicides and the standardization of suicide prevention efforts, the report said.
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Report urges new office for suicide prevention