Army Suicides
In the first quarter of 2016, the military services reported the following:
58 deaths by suicide in the Active Component
18 deaths by suicide in the Reserves
34 deaths by suicide in the National Guard
Sounds really bad until you actually remember the number of enlisted also went down and these tragic ends to lives dedicated toward saving the lives of others ended because they were unable to find one reason to stay alive for their own sake.
Over a decade of so called mandatory "prevention" training and that was the result for the first quarter of this year. Still wondering why the DOD repeatedly states that a lot of these troops committed suicide without being deployed. Obvious question should be, if the training didn't work to prevent those suicides, then how the hell did they expect it to work on those with multiple deployments?
I am still searching for the second quarter report even though this is October 1st.
Within the above report, there is a chart showing what all these "efforts" has produced from 2012 for all branches.
2012
Active 321
Reserve 204 525
2013
Active 255
Reserve 220 475
2014
Active 273
Reserve 179 452
2015
Active 266
Reserve 212 478
All branches for 1st Quarter 2016
Active 58
Reserve 52
These two charts show what the numbers were like in 2010 vs 2016
Pretty much shows that as the number of enlisted went down, the number of suicides did not reflect anything being accomplished by all the training these men and women received, but is worse is that when these young men and women became veterans, the DOD stopped being held responsible for their lives afterwards.
Does the research really shed any light on anything other than they lack the ability to actually see the obivous?
Research sheds new light on Soldier suicides
ARMY
By Gary Sheftick
September 28, 2016
"We're not trying to identify Private Smith, the ticking time bomb ... our goal is to identify a thousand people with a higher concentration [of risk factors]." Michael Schoenbaum
FORT MEADE, Md. (Army News Service) -- Women who join the Army at age 25 or older are the most likely Soldiers to attempt suicide during their first years of service, researchers found. Soldiers who have not yet deployed are also more likely to attempt suicide than their more experienced counterparts.
These are among a host of findings from the Army's multi-year "Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service members," known as STARRS.
At the same time, the research found that women and Soldiers who never deployed are actually not the most likely to die by suicide. Soldiers who use firearms in their suicide attempts are more likely to end up as fatalities, while women are more likely to attempt suicide by drug overdose, with a better chance of rescue.
STARRS, which began in 2009, was actually a grouping of eight different studies conducted for the Army by the National Institute of Mental Health, along with several universities. Harvard Medical School, the University of Michigan and the University of California-San Diego all participated in the study.
STARRS examined the records of 1.6 million Soldiers on active duty from 2004 to 2009. It also collected new information directly from more than 110,000 Soldiers at various points in their careers, from 2010 to 2014.
Participants included new Soldiers in basic training, established Soldiers in units around the world, and members of several brigade combat teams before and after deploying to Afghanistan.
read more here
