What is the Department of Defense Hiding on suicides?

What is the Department of Defense Hiding on suicides?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 3, 2013

There seems to be some kind of a mystery going on but the press hasn't noticed. Is it the lack of willingness to do basic research? Pay attention? Pretend they really care? Or this all more about what the veterans think and they are disposable?

The Department of Defense has not released the Suicide Event Report for 2012, so for now the numbers from 2011 will work to explain what has been going on.

"The AFMES indicates that Attempted Suicides 2011 A total of 915 Service Members attempted suicide in 2011 (Air Force = 241, Army = 432, Marine Corps = 156, Navy = 86). DoDSERs were submitted for 935 suicide attempts (Air Force = 251, Army = 440, Marine Corps = 157, Navy = 87).

Of the 915 Service Members who attempted suicide, 896 had one attempt, 18 had two attempts, and 1 had three attempts."

Keep that in mind when you consider the latest claims by the DOD that suicides have been reduced by 22%.

"With two months to go in this calendar year, defense officials say there have been 245 suicides by active-duty service members as of Oct. 27. At the same time last year there had already been 316. Each of the military services has seen the total go down this year, ranging from an 11 percent dip in the Marine Corps to a 28 percent drop for the Navy. The Air Force had a 21 percent decline, while Army totals fell by 24 percent.

The officials provided the data to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose it publicly.

Last year the number of suicides in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines spiked to 349 for the full 12-month period, the highest since the Pentagon began closely tracking the numbers in 2001, and up from the 2011 total of 301. There were 295 Americans killed in Afghanistan last year, by the AP's count."

The AP forgot about the National Guards and Reservists. "CY 2012: 140 (93 Army National Guard and 47 Army Reserve)" according to the DOD. These suicides were not counted in the press reports however the DOD does count them when they release numbers every month. They also increased the number of Army suicides to 186 for 2012. So far without the Suicide Event Report for 2012, there have been no official releases with the breakdown among the different branches or the number of attempted suicides.

As of right now, there is no way for us to know how many attempted suicide this year or last year.

The DOD wants to be able to claim that most of the loss to suicide were not tied to deployments.

Now we can get to the part where this goes from really sad to the questions that should have been asked.

Where is the report on suicides that happened a year ago? This is the last month of 2013. Why haven't they released it?

Why doesn't the DOD release the other branches on a monthly bases the same way they release the Army, Army National Guards and Army Reserves?

If deployments really have nothing to do with suicides, then what is wrong with their mental health evaluations? What is wrong with their suicide prevention and "resilience" training if it didn't even work on the non-deloyed?

If facts have shown this "resilience" training doesn't work then why did they keep pushing it?

Who made money on this?

Why wasn't anyone held accountable?

Why hasn't anyone researched how many of the discharged under "personality" disorders committed suicide?

Why hasn't anyone researched how many veterans discharged from the military in the last 12 years committed suicide?

Maybe when some of these questions start getting answered then the veterans will know they are not expendable and they do in fact matter.