Suicide Attempts for Vets Jump 500% in Five Years, and Government Ignores It

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted September 11, 2008.

This year, in recognition of National Suicide Prevention Week (Sept. 7-13), the Army chose the theme "Shoulder-to-Shoulder: No Soldier Stands Alone," "to emphasize the strength of the Army Family when it works together to tackle tough problems."

It has not been a good week for the Army Family in spite of the special attention.

On Sept. 8, an altercation between a 22-year-old Fort Hood soldier and his commanding officer, a 24-year-old lieutenant, ended when the soldier first shot and killed his officer and then turned his gun on himself. Both were assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, which had returned from a 15-month tour in Iraq in December. The division is currently in training to redeploy back to Iraq this winter for another 12 months -- which in all probability will turn out to be the as good an explanation as any for the tragedy.

Then on Sept. 9, a VA report acknowledged that suicide rates for young male Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans hit a record high in 2006, the last year for which official records are available. Last week, the Portland Tribune reported that in 2005, the last year for which complete Oregon data has been compiled, 19 Oregon soldiers died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. That same year, 153 Oregon veterans of all ages, serving in various wars, committed suicide.

After five years of war in Iraq, Marine suicides doubled between 2006 and 2007, and Army suicides are at the highest level since records were first kept in 1980. Reported suicide attempts jumped 500 percent between 2002 and 2007.

The Defense Department says the numbers may be partly attributable to better compliance with reporting requirements.

Every year since 2004, when the Army sent its first Mental Health Advisory Team to Iraq to study the distressing rash of soldier suicides, and insisted in its final report that "relationship problems" were the root cause, I have tried to find sympathy for Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army psychiatrist who always seems to get stuck with the impossible task of announcing that the Army is sticking with that absurdity. For the first time this year, Ritchie has been allowed to add the screamingly obvious qualifier: "Lengthy and multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan cause relationship problems, a leading factor in suicides." Albeit indirectly, the role of war in suicides has officially been acknowledged.

Last May, House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Filner, D-Calif., provided the following reaction to VA Secretary James B. Peake's announcement that he was prepared to take on the issue of military suicides:

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Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.

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