Military leaders must help stem suicides?

Military leaders must help stem suicides? Which ones? The leaders coming up with the cockamamie nonsense that tells these men and women they can "train their brains to be mentally tough" and "prevent PTSD" or is Panetta talking about the residual dark-ages commanders still blaming the troops for ending up dead by their own hands? I'd really like to know because all these years later, they have not changed anything they got wrong enough to actually work!

Military leaders must help stem suicides, Panetta says
By GREGG ZOROYA
USA Today
Published: September 16, 2012

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says military leaders should be held accountable for whether they succeed in helping desperate troops avoid choosing suicide -- which he has described as an epidemic in the military and now averaging more than one a day.

"What I've tried to do, very frankly, is to make sure that not only the secretary (of Defense), but all of the military leadership kick ass on this issue," Panetta told USA TODAY in an interview. "Leaders ought to be judged by how they lead on this issue."

He also said that the last decade of fighting two wars holds "lots of lessons" to be learned about "the human side of this prolonged warfare and how do we get a handle" on problems such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Pentagon is facing a record year of suicides among active-duty troops, averaging 33 deaths per month so far this year, according to Pentagon data through Sept. 2.

"I want to make sure that we are aware of how tragic this problem is and how urgent it is for us to try and address it," Panetta said. "We're talking about men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line to protect this country. We have to do everything possible to try to make sure we protect them."

Panetta spoke on the issue Saturday in part because September is national suicide prevention month.

The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines are all reporting potentially record increases this year in suicides. The Marine Corps has averaged about two suicides a week in recent months.

But the Army has suffered the highest numbers, tripling its suicide rate from 9.7 cases-per-100,000 in 2004 to 29.1-per-100,000 last month. In July, a record 38 soldiers killed themselves, according to service data.
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