Army Suicides: Exceed National Rate, Exceed Combat Deaths

From Harvard Magazine:

Acknowledging [Harvard psychology professor Matthew] Nock's expertise in understanding who is at risk for suicide, a new partner recently called on his research team for help: the U.S. Army. The number of suicides in that branch of the military set new records in 2007, 2008, and 2009 (topping out at 162, up from 106 four years earlier). In June 2010 alone, the branch had 32 suspected suicides. If accidental death through risky behavior—such as drinking and driving, or drug overdose—is included, more soldiers now die by their own hands than die in combat. (From 2004 to 2007, the number of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan across all military branches regularly approached or exceeded 100 per month, but the number of combat deaths has lessened in recent years.)

---"A Tragedy and a Mystery: Understanding Suicide and Self-Injury," by Elizabeth Gudrais, Harvard Magazine (January-February 2011)

This article more broadly addresses the issues of better understanding the reasons for suicide and collecting better data associated with it. It focuses on the cutting-edge work of Harvard professor Matthew Nock. It matter-of-factly informs us of what is known:  12% of Americans at one time or another in their lives have suicidal thoughts, 5% attempt suicide, and 1.4% succeed. Two-fifths of those who succeed (40%) have tried before.

But it is the disturbing data and implications of suicide in the Army that jumps off the page at you. It paints a more despairing picture of the health of our military enterprises--to the extent that is possible. The extended period of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the spotty and unreliable progress in social and government stability, the mind-boggling cost, the loss of dear American lives, the multiple tours in war zones that seem unending, and the extent of injury and emotional impairment to those who return, all now seem underscored in bold, deep crimson by this disturbing revelation: now, for the first time, more soldiers have died of suicide and suicide-related, at-risk behavior than combat. And for the first time, the military suicide rate exceeds the national rate, sometimes dramatically so. From the article:

The researchers believe accidental deaths are rightly considered related to suicide, because such deaths often reflect soldiers' mental health and indicate problems that accompany suicidal thinking and behavior. "Alcoholics get into more accidents," says Ronald Kessler, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School who is also part of the research team (see Harvard Portrait, November-December 2005, page 59). "It's an accident, but there's something systematic about it." Traditionally, the military suicide rate has been below that of the general population, Kessler points out: "People in the military are screened very heavily" for mental-health problems. But that balance has switched: at Fort Hood, Texas, the largest army base in the United States, the suicide rate is four times the national average.

Alarmed by these statistics, the army is giving researchers from the University of Michigan, Columbia, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, as well as Nock and Kessler, unprecedented access to the data it collects on soldiers. The army keeps records on "virtually every aspect of a soldier's life," says Nock; those records will be used to see what can be learned about suicides that have already occurred. In some cases, researchers will even examine brain sections of soldiers who committed suicide.

We can only hope that this research will better inform our future decisions about military enterprises to be undertaken in circumstances like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that it will add needed authority and credibility to what is already clear by implication: it is hard to be surprised that suicides, alcoholism, at-risk behavior, and residual emotional issues, have increased with the protracted, debilitating experience of our soldiers in our decade-long military misadventures in those places.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/01/tragedy-and-mystery