Civilian Suicide Study Lesson for Department of Defense

Civilian Suicide Study Lesson for DOD
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
March 17, 2013

There is an important article on Business Insider with a report from The Christian Science Monitor 13-Page Suicide Note Left By Mother Who Jumped With Baby by David Clark Scott, Mar. 16, 2013. In the article researchers studied suicide notes

"Every 14 minutes in the United States, someone dies by suicide" and in those numbers are veterans. Recent research looking into death certificates in 21 states viewed cause of death and mention of military service. The researchers discovered 22 veterans committed suicide everyday. No one will really ever know how many veterans committed suicide because some deaths, without a suicide note, are not cut and dry. Vehicle accidents when cars and motorcycles are crashed into walls and trees. Drug overdoses are not always clear if it was accidental or suicide. Sometimes they don't leave notes. While some do, the truth is, if they think they don't matter, if no one cares, there is no point of putting their feelings in writing.

John Pestian, the Ohio researcher, says "loss of hope" is the common denominator in suicide notes.

Dr. Peter Linnerooth lost hope when he took his own life in January. What was so shocking about him committing suicide was that he helped many in the military and then later work for the VA.

"He was really, really suffering," Linnerooth's widow, Melanie Walsh, told Time for its story on his death. "And it didn't matter that he was a mental health professional, and it didn't matter that I was a mental health professional. I couldn't help him, and he couldn't help himself."

The Washington Post had an article on "Dr. Steven Coughlin, who worked at the VA until December, said nearly 2,000 participants in a recent VA study of 60,000 tracking the health of veterans told researchers they had thought they would be better off dead."

"Despite several years of trying to prevent a rise in the number of military suicides, the Pentagon reported last week that, for the first time in a generation, more active — duty soldiers killed themselves last year than were killed in a war zone," according to The Christian Science Monitor on Feb. 5, 2013. "The Army also saw a record in the number of confirmed or suspected suicides — 349 — among both active and nonactive military personnel. This was a 16 percent increase over 2011 despite the end of a U.S. role in Iraq and a decline of troops in Afghanistan."

Again the wrong numbers of military suicides for 2012 are wrong. The total is at least 492 when the released numbers for all branches are added in, but then there are some not accounted for like Air National Guards and Marine Reservists.

"And during the U.S. recession from 2008 to 2010, the U.S. suicide rate rose four times faster than in the eight years before the economic downturn, according to a study in the British medical journal the Lancet."

While the DOD points to financial problems among servicemen and women as a reason they commit suicides, this should shock them into reality. Had this been the case for military suicides, then the numbers would have gone up between those years and down afterwards, not up. The difference is people do not go into the military for financial gain. It takes a different type of unselfish person to be willing to risk their lives and the DOD needs to face the fact military pay isn't that great. Are financial problems a factor? Yes but since they budget their lives around their military pay and that pay has not decreased, then the argument does not hold up.

The thing the DOD needs to notice is the loss of hope and their lack of doing anything differently. If a psychologist married to a psychologist committed suicide, then that is a clear indication the DOD efforts are far from doing what they claim to be doing. Comprehensive Soldier Fitness does not work no matter how much money they invest in it. The numbers prove that.