Military Suicides 2012 bigger than 2012

The Hype The Press Missed For 2012
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 9, 2014

Remember all the hype of 2012 and the end of the world? Seems all the reports were greatly exaggerated but when nothing happened, the press just dropped all their doom and gloom predictions as if they had never done any of the instigating. After all, Hollywood made a bundle.

There was another story in 2012 that also made headlines. This story also dealt with death and destruction but the lives lost were greatly underestimated. Again, the press pretended as if they never did any reports on the story when people discovered they had most of the reports wrong.

This subject deserved nothing less than the truth. This subject was and still is the number of suicides tied to military service among veterans and those serving during two wars.

The truth is, we will never, ever know the exact numbers but we should be a lot closer to caring about the ones we do know about. At least close enough that what has been obvious to most of us paying attention would become general knowledge to the general public.

Everyday I sit in an office and listen to small talk. Someone brings up the latest news report but it is never about veterans or the military. I get sad, so I just do my work and struggle to hold back wanting to cry. If they saw me cry I'd have to explain to them what I do with my life when I am not making a living as a temp. Just between us, the clued in, we need to get honest about all of this since no one else will really try.

2012 was the highest rate of military suicides and that has not been debated however considering that it was also the year with less servicemembers, it was even more terrible than the press wanted us to realize. Even in 2013 with even less to count, the numbers didn't drop far enough to show any kind of improvement. You can read about just the bad conduct discharges by the thousands for 2013 alone but most of them had been ditched instead of helped.

Consider the simple fact that these men and women were tested for psychological issues before they were trained. Either the testing is lousy of the DOD had to come up with a lousy excuse for the rise in suicides after all their "efforts" to prevent them. Something happened to these folks but once discharged the military didn't have to count any of them and they couldn't count on anyone doing anything for them in return for the blank check they signed over to the nation.

2014 doesn't look much better considering, "Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told a Senate panel in April that 32 airmen have died by suicide so far in 2014, a rate of more than 18 per 100,000 personnel." It was only 14% in 2013. "Fort Bliss, Texas, is reeling from three deaths on Easter weekend that, while still under investigation, are thought to be suicides." A friend informed me there were six in April at Fort Bliss but I have not seen confirmation of this.

The 2012 Military Suicide Report was quietly released and we've talked about it here and there trying to make sense out of it.

In this section, we present the rates of suicide for CY 2012 (see Appendix B for tables). Rates are presented for each Service and in aggregate across the four Services included in the DoDSER surveillance program. In this year’s report, we include rates for both the Active and the Reserve components. All rates included in the tables are crude rates, which means that they are not standardized on any specific demographic factors. Comparisons between groups or across time do not take into account different distributions of factors, such as the age composition of each population, that can provide misleading results. Distributions of demographic characteristics and associated rates are included in the tables in Appendix B with rates suppressed for categories with fewer than 20 events. A detailed discussion on the data sources, definitions, and formulae used in calculating the suicide rates is included in Appendix A.

As of 31 March 2013, the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Service (AFMES) identified 319 suicides among Active component Service members, 73 among Selected Reserve Service members, and 130 among National Guard Service members.

The rate of suicide, per 100,000 Service members, in each of the aforementioned components was as follows: Active component – 22.7, Reserve – 19.3, and National Guard – 28.1. The suicide rates for the Active component of the four Services, per 100,000 Service members, were as follows: Air Force – 15.0, Army – 29.7, Marine Corps – 24.3, Navy – 17.8. The number of suicides for the Reserve components for each Service were too small (n < 20) for the calculation of rates, with the exception of the Air National Guard (19.1 per 100,000 Service members), Army Reserve (24.7 per 100,000 Service members), and the Army National Guard (30.8 per 100,000 Service members).

The suicide rates across demographic categories for the combined Services (Active component only) are displayed in Appendix B (Table B1). The rate of suicide for male Service members was 24.6 per 100,000 Service members; for females, it was 11.7 per 100,000 Service members. The rates for several categories of race/ethnicity were suppressed because of small numbers of suicides. The rate for Caucasian Service members was 25.1 per 100,000 Service members. The rate for non-Hispanic Service members was 23.7 per 100,000 Service members.

In terms of age, the largest rates were observed among Service members 17 to 24 years of age at 24.8 per 100,000 Service members. The rate decreased as age increased. Service members in the junior enlisted rank/grade category (E1–E4) had a rate of 26.6 per 100,000

Service members. The highest rate in terms of educational attainment was observed for Service members with an alternative high school certification (e.g., GED®) at 50.0 per 100,000 Service members. Similar to the pattern for age and rank, the rate decreased as the level of education increased. Service members who were never married had a rate of 22.9 per 100,000 Service members; the rate for married Service members was 21.1 per 100,000.

The rest of the report we can go over as time allows but for now think about this.
January 31, 2012
GRAND TOTAL
Army 560,224
Navy 321,964
Marines 199,966
Air Force 333,245
Total 1,415,399


January 31, 2013
GRAND TOTAL
Army 541,291
Navy 317,237
Marine 195,338
Air Force 333,772
Total 1,387,638

January 31, 2014 GRAND TOTAL
Army 523,001
Navy 323,821
Marines 192,807
Air Force 329,853
Total 1,369,482

The drops were in the thousands. It shows exactly what kind of a crisis the press actually did have to report on but they just let the story and the troops die.  Now they want to pretend as if pushing the story on the hearing about Department of Veterans Affairs is such a new story but it is again an old one. These reports come out over and over again.  Where are all the demands for accountability on suicides? How many Moms have to go to a grave to spend time with their kids on Mother's Day this year because a nonexistent crisis of 2012 meant so much more than the one they were facing all the time?