The Truth on Military Suicides Ignored

The Truth on Military Suicides Ignored
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
March 14, 2014

While reporters seem to be fixated on the report about military suicides up to 2009, they ignore the facts. Why? It is easier to just repeat what they are told. Shouldn't this topic merit serious investigations? If they are focused on the report up to 2009, shouldn't they actually know what happened? How is it that the 24/7 "news" stations cover everything else but them?

CNN did a good job on covering families and the toll on them with Uncounted yet it seems CNN is more focused on stories from other countries than the troops and veterans. Occasionally MSNBC and FOX have spent a little bit of their precious time covering suicides connected to military service, but usually only when the topic has drawn mass attention online.

The Associated Press reported that suicides were at a 26 year high. The report said that suicides and attempted suicides were increasing while troops were deployed. The shocker is, this report didn't come out this year, or last year. The report came out in 2007 and was talking about troops deployed into Iraq. (Army Suicides Highest in 26 Years By PAULINE JELINEK Associated Press Writer, August 15, 2007)

The Associated Press seemed to have forgotten what they reported in May of 2007 with, "Both the VA and the Pentagon in recent weeks have acknowledged a need to improve mental health treatment. Jan Kemp, a VA associate director for education who works on mental health, has estimated there are up to 1,000 suicides a year among veterans within the VA system, and as many as 5,000 a year among all living veterans." (Deployments strain troops' mental health, Pentagon panel warns overburdened system could fail to meet needs, Associated Press, Updated: 7:34 p.m. ET May 4, 2007)

This report was followed by this one in 2008, "In both age groups, the attempted suicides grew at a rate much faster than the VA patient population as a whole.

In addition, this VA study, also obtained exclusively by CBS News, reveals the increasing number of veterans who recently received VA services ... and still succeeded in committing suicide: rising from 1,403 suicides in 2001 to 1,784 in 2005 - figures the VA has never made public." Yet Veterans for Common Sense had to file a lawsuit to get the VA to release data they had been trying to hide, "high-ranking officials that said an average of 18 military veterans kill themselves each day—and five of them are under VA care when they commit suicide. Another e-mail said 1,000 veterans under VA care attempt suicide each month."

Notice how the report said "under VA care" but this came out when most veterans were not in the VA system?
"The task force found 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of Marines report psychological concerns such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from deployment. Among members of the National Guard, the figure is much higher — 49 percent — with numbers expected to grow because of repeated deployments." but even that report wasn't new because the Army released this study in 2006.

No matter what was happening to the troops and veterans, this was overlooked,"Despite the Army's repeated emphasis on expanding psychological services to soldiers, the ratio of mental health providers to soldiers in Iraq dropped to one provider for every 734 troops in 2007 — down from one for every 387 in 2004."

In 2009, Army Vice Chief Of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli said, that 2008 statistics show 30 percent of suicide victims this year were deployed, 35 percent had recently redeployed and 35 percent had no deployment experience at all."

So what happened when the DOD suddenly changed their tune saying deployments had little to do with suicides? Why didn't they actually remind folks that while the number of suicides had gone down from 2012 to 2013, so did the number of enlisted? Other than the reduction in enlisted personnel, there were also bad conduct discharges.

The number of enlisted soldiers forced out for drugs, alcohol, crimes and other misconduct shot up from about 5,600 in 2007, as the Iraq war peaked, to more than 11,000 last year.

"The number of Marines who left after court-martial has dropped from more than 1,300 in 2007 to about 250 last year."

"The number of officers separated from service since 2000 due to a court-martial ranged from a low of 20 in 2001 to a high of 68 in 2007. For enlisted airmen, the number ranged from a high of nearly 4,500 in 2002 to a low of almost 2,900 in 2013

The Navy went through a similar process. When the decision was made to cut the size of the 370,000-strong naval force in 2004, the number of sailors who left due to misconduct and other behavior issues grew. In 2006, more than 8,400 sailors left due to conduct issues.

The last Suicide Event Report released by the DOD was in 2012 for 2011. After that we do not know how many attempted suicide or had multiple attempts. We do not know what happened this year other than the few releases the DOD allows to be made public.

Pentagon data provided to Military Times show 296 suicides among active-duty troops and reserve or National Guard members on active duty in 2013, down 15.7 percent from the 2012 total of 351.

Coming off a record-setting year in 2012, the Navy had the biggest drop, nearly 22 percent, from 59 to 46 sailor deaths. The Army also saw a large decline, down nearly 19 percent from 185 suicides in 2012 to 150 last year.

The Air Force and Marine Corps both had near-record years in 2012; in 2013 they also experienced declines, with 55 airmen dying by suicide in 2013, down from 59 in 2012, and 45 Marines committing suicide in 2013, down from 48 the year before.

So why are so many still committing suicide? Reporters forgot what history has already taught. Just because the truth is out there, if they don't look, they won't find it.