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Monday, February 25, 2013

Suicide in military more tied to PTSD than deployments

This is the headline.
Report: No Link Between Deployment, Suicide in Military
Notice what the headline made you think this article was all about? Bet you thought that it just meant they were passing off military suicides.
Young, white men most at risk
By JASON KOEBLER
February 22, 2013
Here's the section that came after the part they wanted you to read. Notice what is in here and has been linked to suicides.
The report was published in Armed Forces and Society, a military studies journal, and was written by Army Research Psychologists James Griffith and Mark Vaitkus. "Primary risk factors associated with having committed suicide among the 2007-2010 [National Guard] suicide cases were age (young), gender (male), and race (white)," according to the report. People who fall into that group are also most likely to commit suicide in the general population.

The report found very little relationship between whether a soldier had faced active combat and whether they committed suicide, but the study suggests that problems at home that may be associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder could have an impact on whether a soldier takes his or her own life.
read more here
Instead of a headline like they used do you think it would have been more important to discuss what the rest of us are talking about? The fact that PTSD has been linked to military suicides? Maybe if they had they would have pointed out that training itself is traumatic for some. You also have to remember that while the rate of PTSD is 30% the redeployments have increased that risk by 50% for each time they are sent back. All in all, yet again another report that proves beyond a doubt what the DOD has been doing to address all of this has left more dead by suicide.

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