Which federal branch is lying about military suicides?
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
April 3, 2013
If what they were doing was working I would be the last one to complain about any of this no matter how much money was spent. I know what it is like for the veterans and their families. I know what it is like to try to deal with guilt after suicide ended the life of someone loved. Above all of that I am also deeply saddened by the knowledge of what it is like on the other side of this darkness when they begin to heal, when families begin to thrive and they rush to help others like them.
What is going on here? Billions spent on Suicide Prevention and PTSD but we ended up with the highest numbers? The DOD says "no connection between deployments and suicides" but the National Institute of Mental Health said the opposite.
In February I posted
No Link Between Deployment, Suicide in Military
Young, white men most at risk
By JASON KOEBLER
February 22, 2013
A study released Friday has found that demographics, and the ending of a relationship—and not deployment status—are most closely associated with suicides in the Army National Guard.
Between 2007 and 2010, 294 members of the Army National Guard committed suicide. The suicide rate for members of the National Guard was higher than that of members of the active Army (1 in 3,225 National Guard committed suicide, compared to 1 in 4,000 for the Army.) The suicide rate in the general population is 1 in 5,000.
The report was published in Armed Forces and Society, a military studies journal, and was written by Army Research Psychologists James Griffith and Mark Vaitkus. "Primary risk factors associated with having committed suicide among the 2007-2010 [National Guard] suicide cases were age (young), gender (male), and race (white)," according to the report. People who fall into that group are also most likely to commit suicide in the general population.
The report found very little relationship between whether a soldier had faced active combat and whether they committed suicide, but the study suggests that problems at home that may be associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder could have an impact on whether a soldier takes his or her own life.
"Military-related variables, including having been deployed and combat exposure, showed little relationship to suicide," the report says. "There was some evidence that postdeployment stressors were associated with suicide intentions, namely, loss of significant other and major life change."
This is from PBS in 2012
Why Soldiers Keep Losing to Suicide
December 20, 2012, 10:57 am ET by Sarah Childress
Most soldiers who take their own lives today have no history of deployment. They’ve never seen combat, never been to war.
Nobody really knows why.
And although the military’s suicide problem flared during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, so far it doesn’t seem to be ending with them.
About 53 percent of those who died by suicide in the military in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, had no history of deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, according (pdf) to the Defense Department. And nearly 85 percent of military members who took their lives had no direct combat history, meaning they may have been deployed but not seen action.
That is the claim they have been making all along. This is what the Generals, Chiefs of Staff for the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force have been saying. This is what the Department of Defense has been saying. This is what the reporters keep repeating without ever asking for proof.
The proof has been in the billions of dollars spent on Resiliency programs, to prevent PTSD and Suicide Prevention to prevent suicides leading up to last year with the highest suicide rates. Billions? Yes! Not that the media has managed to track any of it down.
This is from 2010
America's war veterans are at high risk of suicide. The suicide rate among our active military now surpasses that of the general population. Military suicides have risen to record levels for four straight years.
Rising rates can be linked to a number of factors, including multiple redeployments, combat injuries, extreme stress on marriage and family relationships, and reluctance of service members to seek treatment.
There were 160 reported active-duty Army suicides during 2009, up from 140 suicides in 2008.
For 2009, there were 78 confirmed suicides among Army Reserve soldiers not on active duty, up from 57 such deaths in 2008.
Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death among all Americans.
PTSD Treatment Efforts for Returning War Veterans to be Evaluated
National Institute of Mental Health
September 30, 2009
Joan Cook, Ph.D., of Yale University and colleagues have been awarded funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to evaluate the implementation of two evidence-based psychotherapies for treating post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among veterans. The grant addresses the NIH Challenge Grant topic "Strategies to Support Uptake of Interventions within Clinical Community and Settings."
Strategies for promoting evidence-based PTSD treatments in the military are urgently needed as more and more soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with this disorder. The research team will characterize and assess the implementation of two types of therapy—prolonged exposure (PE) therapy and cognitive processing therapy (CPT)—within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) residential PTSD treatment programs. PE involves helping people confront their fear and feelings about the trauma they experienced in a safe way through mental imagery, writing, or other ways. In CPT, the patient is asked to recount his or her traumatic experience, and a therapist helps the patient redirect inaccurate or destructive thoughts about the experience.
Dr. Cook and colleagues will partner with the Northeast Program Evaluation Center, which monitors all VA mental health programming and patient outcomes, and the National Center for PTSD, which oversees the dissemination of PE and CPT nationally among VA providers. They plan to monitor and assess the efforts of more than 250 mental health providers in residential PTSD treatment settings via online questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and on-site observations.
Army STARRS Preliminary Data Reveal Some Potential Predictive Factors for Suicide
March 22, 2011
The following findings are preliminary. They involve relatively few descriptive predictors and do not account for complex events or interactions. Researchers plan to do additional work with a much larger historical dataset and with survey data from the All Army Study and the New Soldier Study (two Army STARRS components) to test these initial findings.
The main preliminary findings include the following:
TIME: The suicide rate increased over time for soldiers in all settings (i.e.., those never deployed, currently deployed and previously deployed).
DEPLOYMENT: The suicide rate was highest among those who are currently deployed (18.3 deaths per 100,000) and dropped after deployment (15.9 per 100,000). For the entire TAIHOD dataset (from 2004 through 2008), 23 percent of the soldiers studied were currently deployed, 42 percent had never been deployed and 35 percent had been previously deployed but were not currently deployed.
Here are some more links
Military Suicides and the money behind them
57% Military suicides happened after they sought help
Where has all the money gone on Suicide Prevention?
$1.7 billion for higher suicides and attempts in 2012?
