Female soldiers' suicide rate triples when at war

Female soldiers' suicide rate triples when at war
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
The suicide rate for female soldiers triples when they go to war, according to the first round of preliminary data from an Army study.

The findings, released to USA TODAY this week, show that the suicide rate rises from five per 100,000 to 15 per 100,000 among female soldiers at war. Scientists are not sure why but say they will look into whether women feel isolated in a male-dominated war zone or suffer greater anxieties about leaving behind children and other loved ones.

Even so, the suicide risk for female soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan is still lower than for men serving next to them, the $50 million study says.

Findings also show that marriage somehow helps inoculate male and female soldiers from killing themselves while they are overseas. Although these death rates among GI's who are single or divorced double when they go to war, the rate among married soldiers does not increase, according to the study.

Scientists say they hope these and other findings will help them tease out protective social patterns — such as, for example, that sense in a marriage of mattering to someone else — that can be encouraged or instilled in all soldiers to lower the risk of suicide.

"One of the big things we're interested in now is digging into this marriage thing and saying, 'What is it you get, by being married? And how could we put it in a bottle so we can give it to everybody, whether or not they're married?" says Ronald Kessler, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School who is working on the project.
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Female soldiers' suicide rate triples when at war

Dead soldier's property bought from storage kept from family

UPDATE December 6, 2010

Happy Ending

Family gets back personal effects of Marine killed in Afghanistan
Published: Sunday, December 05, 2010, 12:00 PM
The brother of the first U.S. servicewoman to die in the war in Afghanistan said he is relieved to get back her personal effects from an Indiana businessman who bought them and initially refused to hand them over.
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Family gets back personal effects of Marine killed in Afghanistan



UPDATE

Man offers to return Marine's personal items
By Joel Hood and David Elsner, TRIBUNE REPORTERS
10:17 p.m. CST, November 30, 2010

Not since his days as a Marine in combat in Iraq has Matthew Winters Jr. felt a call of duty like the one he embarked on Tuesday, trying to recover the identification tags, medals and folded burial flag of his younger sister, who was the first U.S. servicewoman killed in the Afghanistan campaign.

The personal effects of Sgt. Jeannette Lee Winters, a Gary native, are being held by a northwest Indiana businessman who found himself at the center of a public firestorm when he told the Winters family that if they wanted the mementos back, they'd have to pay for them.

But late Tuesday, Mark Perko said he had a change of heart and agreed to hand over the items without payment.

"I'm just going to cut my losses on this stuff," said Perko, a used furniture salesman who purchased the contents of the Winters' family storage locker four years ago. "They can have it back if they want it."
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Man offers to return Marine's personal items

Brother of dead Marine says deal could be near to get her property back
November 30, 2010

By Jon Seidel, Post-Tribune
The brother of the first U.S. servicewoman killed in Afghanistan said he hopes a deal can be made Tuesday to retrieve her personal effects from a businessman who has been trying to sell them.

Matthew Winters Jr. said he talked to Mark Perko, of Hobart, Ind., and the two men could meet later Tuesday to discuss how Winters’ family can retrieve items belonging to the late Marine Sgt. Jeannette Winters.

Matthew Winters said Perko wouldn’t settle on how much he wants for Jeannette Winters’ property that Perko bought from an abandoned storage unit more than four years ago.

The collection includes Jeannette Winters’ funeral flag, her dog tag, military medals and even the Gold Star banner that families of deceased members of the military often display.

Perko, who owns a furniture outlet business in Lake Station, Ind., has already rejected an offer of $1,000 and four tickets to a Chicago Bears football game, according to Robert Farmer, executive director of Webb House Inc., which dedicated the Sgt. Jeannette Winters Centers for Homeless Female Veterans last week in Gary.

Farmer wants to display the items at the homeless shelter.
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Brother of dead Marine

The family of Sgt. Amanda Sheldon hopes her death may spark change

WOODTV8 | October 14, 2010
The family of Sgt. Amanda Sheldon hopes her death may spark change. The 2004 Belding graduate's body will return to West Michigan on Thursday night, about one week after Sheldon took her own life while serving at a Fort Bragg, N.C., military base.

Female soldier killed at Fort Hood had just returned from Iraq due to pregnancy

Fort Hood shooting: one of victims was pregnant
One of the 13 people shot dead in the massacre at the Fort Hood military base in Texas was a pregnant woman, according to reports.

Francheska Velez, 21, from Chicago, was filling out paperwork when Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on the Texas base .

She had only just returned from a tour in Iraq three days before, coming back early because she was pregnant, her father Juan Velez told Fox News Chicago. She was expecting a baby boy in May, he said.


Mr Velez said it had been his daughter's dream to join the army and she had just signed up for another three years.
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Fort Hood shooting one of victims was pregnant

100 U.S. female service members have died in Iraq

100 U.S. female service members have died in Iraq
Story Highlights
Latest death of female service member in Iraq blamed on natural causes

Of the 100 dead, 97 were troops and three were military civilian employees

Sixty-one of the deaths have been classified as hostile

NEW: Female suicide bomber kills 8 at checkpoint outside Baquba
(CNN) -- The death of an Air Force technical sergeant in Iraq last week quietly ushered in a somber milestone: 100 American female service members now have died in Iraq, according to a CNN count of Pentagon figures.

The latest death was Tech. Sgt. Jackie L. Larsen, 37, of Tacoma, Washington, who died of natural causes July 17 at Balad Air Base, Iraq. She was assigned to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, Beale Air Force Base, California, according to the Pentagon.

The death comes during what is on pace to be the lowest monthly toll in the war. Pentagon records show that at least nine U.S. troops have died in July. The lowest number in the war was in May, with 19. The total of U.S. service member deaths in the Iraq war now stands at 4,124.

Of the 100 female service members who died:


97 were troops and three were military civilian employees.


61 of them have been classified as hostile -- occurring during combat or enemy attacks -- and 39 have been non-hostile.


12 died in 2003, 19 in 2004, 20 in 2005, 15 in 2006, 27 in 2007, and seven this year so far.


80 of those were members of the Army, nine were Navy, seven were Marines, and four were Air Force.

Meanwhile, a female suicide bomber detonated explosives at an Awakening Council checkpoint just outside of Baquba, killing eight people and wounding 24 Thursday night, Baquba police said.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/24/iraq.main/index.html
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