Army Battles War-Stress Stigma

Army Battles War-Stress Stigma
Written by
Derry London
WLTX news
Jul 6, 2012

Washington, DC (written by Gail Sheehy/Special for USA Today) -- Daniel Rodriguez joined the Army when his home life collapsed. His parents split. His father dropped from a heart attack. He was 18 and on the runty side for a high school football player, but with a dream of playing at a Division I college.

Three weeks after burying his father, the angry teen made his way to an Army recruitment center. Like so many of today's volunteers, he was looking for a new home, discipline and the directions for becoming a man.

But Iraq and Afghanistan are unique in America's wars, clouding that traditional coming-of-age road map. The invisible wounds of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and family breakup have soared for the military there, along with repeated redeployments and a 360-degree combat-alert range. The most glaring result is the 80% increase in suicides, averaging nearly one a day this year - the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war. This is the second year in a row that more active-duty soldiers have been lost to self-inflicted death than to combat.

These appalling statistics have given the Army a new mission - to treat those invisible wounds of war before soldiers come home with their mental composure shattered.

Pvt. Rodriguez was a prime candidate to join the epidemic of military suicides. During 12 months of walking patrols in what he calls the "concrete jungle" of Baghdad during the surge of 2007, he dodged more than 1,000 roadside bombs. But he lost a dozen of his buddies. And in Afghanistan, he was thrown together in a remote outpost with Afghan soldiers who betrayed the Americans and sided with the Taliban.
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