Army Suicides; The baggage they brought with them
Beretverde sends a link from CBS News that reports the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS) finds that 1-in-5 new recruits to the Army had mental problems before they enlisted and that 1-in-10 had contemplated suicide before they joined.
“Some of the differences in disorder rates are truly remarkable,” said Ronald Kessler, McNeil Family Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and senior author of the paper on mental disorder prevalence. “The rate of major depression is five times as high among soldiers as civilians, intermittent explosive disorder six times as high, and PTSD nearly 15 times as high.”
Nearly 60 percent of solider suicide attempts were traced to pre-enlistment mental disorders, which are acutely more common among non-deployed U.S. Army soldiers than demographically similar portions of the general population, according to the study.
Well, since we already know that the majority of suicides were among soldiers who hadn’t deployed, this kind of explains it. But TAH has been saying it for years. Just last year we said it at least twice. While dumbasses were telling us it was guns and SGLI that caused it. Even though the ‘experts’ wanted to disarm the troops.
Category: Veterans Issues
it seem’s as though the suicide rate among bankers is pretty damn high too!! can’t wait to see what the progs blame that on!
From the CBS story: “It is striking that nearly 50 percent of the soldiers who attempted suicide made their first attempt before joining the Army, as history of suicide attempts is asked about in recruitment interviews and applicants who report such a history typically are excluded from service,” Matthew Nock, professor of psychology at Harvard University and lead author of this report on soldier suicides, said in a statement.
Does make you wonder just how many new enlistees are actually reporting previous suicide attempts.
I would argue that the actual rate is probably significantly higher. It seems that many of the new trainees we receive (at least on the Army side) not only come in with significantly more “baggage” but also come in with significantly weaker, or non-existent, coping mechanisms. The Army, then, and its leadership, get stuck holding the bag when these individuals break.
We routinely chapter out new trainees who had previous suicide attempts before they joined and other behavioral health issues. It happens every basic training cycle I’ve been involved in which is around 18 total and counting. I also agree that some of them have little or no coping skills and any type of stress causes them anxiety issues.
We have a mentally weak society as it is. We never teach our kids how to deal with adversity. When a kid admits to being stressed out in school or in a social setting he is given a pity party and the standards are lowered. He isnt taught how to handle stress, only to use it as an excuse for not performing.
When I was on the Drill Field we had scores of kids who had prior issues who hid them before coming in. We had a guy who was recruited from a shelter for mentally unstable adults.
Also from the CBS story (emphasis added): The second of the three Army STARRS papers found that 13.9 percent of soldiers considered suicide at some point in their lifetime, and 2.4 percent had attempted suicide – a rate that is actually twice as high for civilians, although soldiers’ suicide attempts are more commonly lethal.
Unless that CBS story is poorly written (always a possibility in the MSM), apparently the Army is doing something right. That statement appears to say that the rate of suicide attempts among Army personnel is half that of the (presumably) comparable civilian population.
The suicide rate of civilian medicos is very high as well. The next person to end herself/himself in your circle of acquaintances is as or more likely to be a physician:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/?s=Suicide
This didn’t take much effort on the part of the researchers I suspect, after all the gen pop rate of considering suicide is 1 out of every 2 people has thought about it and 1 out 4 considered it…
Statistically speaking the military rate is slightly lower than the rate for males in the general population…in the data for 2010 the genpop suicide rate for men was 19.9 while the miltary was at 17.5, the mixed gender rate for society at large was 12.1.
An epidemic by definition is the sudden increase of occurrence over the endemic levels of occurrence. The military and genpop suicide rates were both around 10.5% in 2000, and both rose over the next ten years with the military surpassing the mixed gender civilian rate in 2006. Since both population groups were seeing a rise in incidence levels it’s not clear if either was a direct result of an epidemic increase or a normal increase in endemic occurrences. I believe a more appropriate comparison is the military rate to the male population rate as the military is still primarily a male organization with 85% of its members males. Therefore it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the military rate of suicide has been consistently lower than the male rate of the general population….hardly an epidemic by definition, unacceptable perhaps but epidemic not at all.
Harvard researchers could have had undergraduates pull this data as it sits on the CDC site and numerous others….but what do I know? I’m just a cranky old fart with a big mouth and lots of opinions….
VOV_I suspect the true figure is actually higher than 50% when you factor in all the angry adolescents who get their romantic desires rebuffed or don’t get their way with their parents and respond with, “Well I’ll show them. I’ll kill myself and they’ll all be sorry.”
The real difficulty here is in determining what is a serious contemplation of offing oneself as opposed to immature overreaction which is almost universal among teens.
And damn, I was hoping lawyers would be at the top of that list.
Lawyers indeed, well certain ones anyway…
Rates of suicide by profession from The New Health Guide
(Don’t see military anywhere in here)
Professional Times More Likely to Commit Suicide than Average
Physicians 1.87 times
Dentists 1.67 times
Veterinarians 1.54 times
Finance workers 1.51 times
Chiropractors 1.50 times
Heavy construction operators 1.46
Urban planners 1.43 times
Hand molders 1.39 times
Sellers of real estate 1.38
Assemblers of electrical equipments 1.36
Lawyers 1.33 times
Lathe operators 1.33 times
Farm managers 1.32 times
Operators of heat treating equipments 1.32 times
Electricians 1.31 times
Precision woodworkers 1.3 times
Pharmacists 1.29 times
Natural scientists 1.28 times
So…if you’re a doctor selling real estate of the side with a hobby of woodworking, probably shouldn’t own a handgun.
Hand molders? WTF is that – the modern term for plaster casters?
http://occupations.careers.org/43357/hand-molder
David…I’ve been a “hand molder” since puberty. Didn’t realize until now it was an occupation you got paid for. Man…did I miss my career calling!
I could have sworn I made a comment on this yesterday. Oh well. I wonder where I put it.
DUDE! I think the blog ate it!
I wonder how the rates compare to jobs of similar stress levels. Police/Fire-rescue/armed security/heavy construction-or-demolition/etc.
More clearly, compare closely related career fields. Do military IT people suicide at a different rate than civilian IT people?
Oops, Sparks sort of beat me too it.
Not really PavePusher. I would like to see numbers on jobs in similar stress environments to the military too. I think you are on to something that it would be a better picture of military suicides.
I know when my son went through Army basic and MOS school, at least 2 of his peers attempted it. Didn’t even make the local news, so it must be a common occurrence.
Oh, that was about 5 years ago.
Enlist more folk with “weak heart,” get more suicides…
Leave it to the Army to spend money on a study that anyone who is actually in the trenches could have told them 10 years ago. Back when I was in the Norfolk area, it was a regular occurrence to get soldiers from Ft Eustis who were intellectually challenged or, using the old terminology, mentally retarded. Many of them could have easily qualified for special services in the community their IQs were so low. Over the last few years, the stories of people living under bridges or being recruited on their way out of the psych ward became routine. Schizophrenics, kids with extensive pre-elistment alcohol and hard drug histories, failure to thrives with multiple suicide attempts/residential treatment and multiple trials of medication before enlistment (which they of course don’t report) or the people who say they had PTSD because Gunny yelled at them in boot are now the norm. There was a time when these people would have been separated for fraudulent enlistment, given an RU4 code that ensured they never came back and they went on their merry way. Now commands are too afraid of their shadows and the possibility of a CONGRINT to follow the instruction and they all get medical boards and subsequent medical retirement because the bar for proving that the military did not make their condition worse (even if they have only been in for a handful of months) is almost unobtainably high. In the end, you have people sucking up resources on the front and back end while contributing minimally and in some cases, actually making things a whole lot more dangerous for everyone. Oh and by the way, Congress lumps them in with the guys who were injured or wounded de novo in the service when it comes to the protected COLA, so they’ll be getting the full increase on their new life time hand out from Uncle Sam while the guys who put in 20 won’t. Don’t get me wrong, most branches of the service have long and glorious histories of taking troubled kids, giving them structure and helping them to turn… Read more »
Nail… Hammer… You nailed it.
Very insightful. The last sentence reminds me how the Carter Administration treated the military as the “Jobs Corps” (instead of Marine Corps). Tank crews didn’t have to speak English, record Cat 4 enlistments and coed basic training. Full circles?
Sounds like it to me. I’ve actually had people ask me, after making half hearted suicide attempts (aka, cat could have made deeper scratches), “what kind of discharge can I get now and will I keep my GI bill?” And you know what? They usually get it because little Johnny’s parents hire a lawyer to harass the snot out of the command, or if they’re smart, the hospital and the hospital CO, who of course is looking towards their star, makes the provider cave so that it all just goes away. Those kids and the ones that claim that they are traumatized by the fact that the military isn’t like Call of Duty (as they had imagined) because they could actually get hurt. Once upon a time, they called that malingering or cowardice. Now they make it a diagnosis and compensate it.