War is hell, but suicide is worse

The Army is losing its battle to stem suicides among troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a recent report showing that 32 soldiers in one year killed themselves in the war zone, according to The Hartford Courant.

The number of suicides in Afghanistan is climbing, despite multiple new efforts by military officials to improve training and education in suicide prevention and mental health, The Courant reported. Suicide was a leading cause of non-combat deaths in Iraq last year, accounting for nearly one in three non-hostile Army fatalities.

Army officials who released the report were reluctant to draw a link between combat exposure and suicide, repeating assertions made in past years that failed personal relationships, along with legal and financial problems, were the main factors driving suicides, according to The Courant. But they did acknowledge that long and repeated tours of duty were wearing down soldiers' mental resilience.

"Is it the war? It's unquestionable that the high op-tempo, the multiple deployments and long deployments put a real strain on relationships," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army's top psychiatrist, in a conference call with reporters. "There's also normal, girlfriend-boyfriend breaking up, irrespective of the war, marital difficulties that arise in both civilians and soldiers. ... We're not seeing a clear relationship between conflict increase and suicide."

Elspeth Ritchie Photo Ritchie and Brig. Gen. Rhonda L. Cornum, assistant surgeon general for force protection, said The Courant that Army leaders would continue to emphasize training programs that alert commanders and soldiers to signs of stress and that encourage troubled troops to seek professional help.

"One of the things that I believe is happening, looking at these reports, is that the Army is very, very busy, and perhaps we haven't taken care of each other as much as we'd like to," Ritchie said.

The increase in suicides in the war zone was one factor driving an overall increase in suicides among active-duty soldiers last year, The Courant reported. The Army released figures showing 115 confirmed suicides in 2007, both stateside and abroad — the highest number recorded since the Army began keeping such records in 1980. In 2006, 102 suicides were reported. The numbers do not include suicides among veterans who left the service.

The active Army suicide rate reached 18.8 suicides per 100,000 soldiers in 2007 — also the highest rate on record and an increase over the 2006 suicide rate of 17.5 per 100,000.

Army leaders said they had scrambled in recent months to hire 180 new mental-health workers to treat troops at home bases, but they did not announce plans to beef up the contingent of counselors treating troops deployed in Iraq, The Courant reported. Despite the rising suicide numbers in Iraq, the ratio of mental-health counselors to soldiers in the war zone has dropped — from one provider for every 387 troops in 2004, to one for every 734 last year.

The Army has made a number of changes to its suicide-prevention and mental-health programs in the past several years, some prompted by a Courant series in 2006 that found the military was failing to adequately screen and treat troops with psychological problems. New policies adopted since then call for closer monitoring of troops on psychiatric medications and limits on keeping troops with mental-health problems in combat zones, according to The Courant.

(This article is an update of a story written two years ago).