Texas National Guard sees a spike in suicides

Texas National Guard sees a spike in suicides
Grim statistic: More took their own lives than died in combat
By LINDSAY WISE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Feb. 8, 2011, 9:50PM
A spike in the number of Texas National Guard soldiers who took their own lives last year has resulted in a sobering statistic: More members of the Texas Guard have been lost to suicide than to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A total of 12 Texas Army National Guard troops have been killed in action since 2001. During that same time period, 18 killed themselves, according to Texas Army National Guard headquarters at Camp Mabry in Austin.

That grim tally includes seven suicides in 2010, a jump from just one, two or none in previous years.

Senior Texas Guard officials said they're distraught by the sharp increase.

"We can only hope that it's a temporary thing, and we are certainly concerned about it, and we're looking at how can we change that," said Chaplain Lt. Col. Stephen Vaughn, operations chaplain for Texas Army National Guard.

"Losing a soldier in combat is horrible, but losing a comrade here in the States is unacceptable," said Col. Orlando Salinas, director of Joint Family Support Services for Texas Military Forces. "We take that very personally, and we want to do all we can to help all our service members and their families."

The statistics in Texas reflect a nationwide trend in the Army, which recently reported that suicides among National Guard and Reserve forces jumped significantly last year from 80 deaths in 2009 to 145 deaths in 2010, even as the number of active-duty soldiers who took their own lives went down slightly, from 162 in 2009 to 156 in 2010.

"It's emblematic of a string of broken systems, and in the National Guard and Reserve, some of the support structures you have on the active-duty side, you just don't get," said Tom Tarantino, senior legislative associate for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington .
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Texas National Guard sees a spike in suicides