Deployments don’t cause suicides says study
Stars & Stripes reports that a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and conducted by Cynthia A. LeardMann, M.P.H., of the Naval Health Research Center, San Diego, CA has come to the conclusion that we’ve all suspected; military suicides are virtually unrelated to deployments;
Between 2001 and 2008, there were 83 suicides — 12.8 percent — among a total of 646 deaths of those enrolled in the Millennium Cohort Study.
“In models adjusted for age and sex, factors significantly associated with increased risk of suicide included male sex, depression, manic-depressive disorder, heavy or binge drinking, and alcohol-related problems,” the study said. “The authors found that none of the deployment-related factors (combat experience, cumulative days deployed, or number of deployments) were associated with increased suicide risk in any of the models.”
The study noted that other studies have shown a marked increase in the incidence of mental health disorder diagnoses among active-duty servicemembers since 2005, paralleling the suicide incidence.
“This suggests that the increased rate of suicide in the military may largely be a product of an increased prevalence of mental disorders in this population …,” the study said.
Yeah, I think you and I have been telling the public this for years. It’s the culture not the military that is causing this increase in suicides. Now, can we get down to the business of dealing with it instead of propagating stereotypes that only serve to worsen the problem?
Category: Veterans Issues
Without stereotypes, most Americans wouldn’t recognise a veteran. Or is that profiling?
We went from the old “Suck it up cupcake” to the “aw poor misunderstood guy” mentality at warp speed. Society has been feminized ( translation: led to believe wearing your feelings on your sleeve and your feelings trumping all matters),
Too many of our youth are led to believe that they are the center of the universe. When they find out no one really gives a shit they can’t handle it.
That, and if they have to endure more than ten minutes sans the Internet via either computer, tablet, smart phone or their MP3 players, their heads will implode!
Bring up the study of WWII “Battle fatigue” amongst various units. Guess which ones had the lowest r rates? It didn’t compute!- Airborne units. Leadership and mindset helps.
We’ve gone from the John Wayne-guy who could handle things to the cover model guy who leaves the 5 o’clock shadow because that’s what is hip right now.
These kids are raised without any sense of how to handle violence or bullying or being a target. Even the slightest hint of those things sends their over-protective parents into spasms of fear. They’re growing up with no mental fortitude or sense of alertness, which is what is needed during your entire lifetime, and the electronic junk they get makes it worse.
I disagree, Old Dog. But only with the adjective you used, the rest of it’s spot-on
I don’t think that ‘feminized’ covers it. I think that ‘pussified’ is more succinct.
This can’t be! The media have been associating deployments and suicides for years now, notwithstanding the fact that, for the same years, more than half the suicides were committed by those who never deployed. Golly, how can this be? The next thing you know, some brainiac will ruin the sexual assault template too! Yes, some researcher may actually dismiss the anonymous survey which is the source of the alarm and, after careful study, conclude that the sexual assault rate in the military is lower than that of the outside world. Oh, horror of horrors!
The Marine Corps’ “Never Leave a Marine Behind” suicide prevention/suicide awareness training has stated this since 2009.
Good job, Doctors.
As a person who deals with a mentally ill family member, and with one who committed suicide because of it…If it would be recognized and treated, it would stand to reason that the incidence instead of “coincidence” of what people believe to be combat related suicides then would surely drop.
But, being pussified, or feminized despite how good it sounds is not at play. Those John Wayne boys surely had the cajones and suffered greatly, but how many of them were alcoholics who got by? Self medicating with alcohol or drugs is not uncommon for people with mental illness and some survive and function and others do not.
Sorry gentlemen, but the comments rubbed me the wrong way. While I hate that there is a certain wuss factor these days among the ranks, it cannot possibly trump the medical diagnosis.
I’m a firm believer that all the touchy feely power point classes we have to sit through every quarter is increasing the suicide rate.
Our ancestors and even our grandparents and parents expected (and were expected by others) to handle things that would just kill most folk today. Seriously, you tell somebody they “can’t” their whole life (like kids with “helicopter” parents are today) they’ll probably believe it and be some helpless can’t-do-crap-for-themselves sumbitches. When the going gets tough, the wusses go to pieces.
One thing I didn’t see addressed in the article is whether the stresses of military life might have had any influence on the identified risk factors such as depression and substance abuse.
@10–Even in CIVLANT, every PowerPoint presentation I am forced to sit through puts me that much closer to eating a shotgun.
We had one guy on my first boat who committed suicide. Not particularly bright, not particularly disciplined, and certainly not cut out for being on the boat. We knew that, we told the command, but they kept him on far past the point he should have been shown the door to an easier billet. He had also never made a Westpac. It was his mental state and not any stress he was subjected to that caused him to pull out his .45 on Topside watch and walk behind the sail that night.
5 Yeah, John Wayne was a real tough guy.
Got nothing empirical to back this up, but my suspicion is that almost all military suicides stem from problems the military member brought with him to the military, not from anything introduced to him from the military. (Just a different way of saying what several others have already said.)
While suicides suck and we should try to do something about them, we get this focus because of the war and the military being a small population. I’ll have to find the report, but there was a study done a couple years ago that said the military’s suicide rate was approaching the national average. Which means statistically civilians are more likely to kill themselves than soldiers.
15 I agree. Its like PTSD, which I believe is really just camouflage for preexisting conditions which should have disqualified a person from service in the first place. Unfortunately the media ran with the PTSD thing to smear the military.
as a rule, the military is more disciplined than the civilian world, so it stands to reason that the military would have more mature ways to deal with problems than the civilians. now that the military is being pussified, and discipline is being removed, suicide rates go up and are near the civilian level. makes sense to me, remove the discipline, weaken the fortitude of the soldier. we dont yell at privates anymore, that might hurt their feelings. we cant smoke privates anymore, thats called hazing (i thought it was corrective training). we cant enforce standards, thats sexist/racist/somethingist.
as for PTS, everyone deals with traumatic events in their own way. it is a real issue, but it isnt the life long debilitating disorder that the media and shrinks want to make it out to be. i dont think that PTSD is always equated to preexisting conditions, i think a lot of it is just weak minded people that shouldnt have been in the military and a lot of it is people trying to milk the system.