National Guards and Reservist Suicides Increased

National Guards and Reservist suicides went up but that is not the headline the AP used. They used "Number of military suicides dropped last year" without mentioning that the numbers of active duty military folks also went down.

In the Army alone, they say that the numbers dropped from 185 in 2012 to 152 in 2013 but the Army had also released a report stating that 11,000 had been discharged in 2013 for bad conduct alone. This report did not count the number of soldiers cut to trim down the size of the Army. The Marines, Navy and Air Force also saw reduction in force size, but when they talk about the number of suicides going down, they seem to forget that simple fact.

The National Guards and Reservist numbers going up have been ignored as if they don't matter. The DOD is still trying to minimize the connection between deployment and suicides.

"According to the Army data, more than half of the reservists who committed suicide in 2012 and 2013 had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials, however, have not been able to establish a strong link between military service on the warfront and suicide."

They can't establish a strong link to much at all.

Number of military suicides dropped last year
Associated Press
By Lolita C. Baldor
Published: April 25, 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — Suicides across the military dropped by more than 15 percent last year, but new detailed data reveals an increase in the number of Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers who took their own lives.

The overall totals provided by the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps give some hope that prevention programs and increased efforts to identify troops at risk may be taking hold after several years of escalating suicides. But the increase among Army National Guard and Reserve members raises questions about whether those programs are getting to the citizen soldiers who may not have the same access to support networks and help that their active duty comrades receive.

Not only did the Army National Guard and Reserve suicides increase from 140 in 2012 to 152 last year, but the 2013 total exceeded the number of active duty soldiers who took their own lives, according to the Army. There were 151 active duty soldier suicides last year, compared with 185 in 2012, Army officials said.

The Pentagon plans to release a report Friday on military suicides. But those numbers differ a bit from the totals provided by the services because of complicated accounting changes in how the department counts suicides by reservists. Some of the Pentagon numbers were finalized a year ago, while the services have more recently updated totals that reflect the results of some death investigations.

According to the four military services, there were 289 suicides among active duty troops in 2013, down from 343 in 2012. The vast majority were in the Army, the nation's largest military service. The Navy saw a 25 percent decline, from 59 in 2012 to 44 in 2013. The Marines went from 48 to 45, while the Air Force went from 51 to 49.
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