Soldier Suicides

Some data on "non-hostile" attrition from the Iraq war:

An Army spokesperson told Aljazeera.net that, as of 8 December 601 soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for behavioural health reasons.

Meanwhile, 42 soldiers have also been evacuated from Afghanistan for similar causes.  article

A specific behavioral health concern is the number of soldier suicides. Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd has the job of combatting the notion that it's the stress of combat or the specifics of the Iraq war that are causing "self-inflicted" deaths.

"[O]verwhelmingly the most common cause, the trigger of suicides in the Army [is]the loss of a significant relationship," Rudd said.

Not sure how they've arrived at that conclusion, but if true, what it says, among other things is our soldiers aren't quite machines yet. They still have human emotional needs and reactions.

We're working on that.

Of the more than 450 US fatalities since the beginning of the war in Iraq, 20 have reportedly been suicides, or "self-inflicted" deaths, as the military prefers to call them.

There may well be more.

The precise number of troops who have taken their own lives has not even been determined, with some ambiguous cases still under review.

...Ironically, Rudd said most of the suicides in Iraq occurred after 1 May, when President Bush announced the end of major combat operations, leading some to the conclusion that post-combat peacekeeping situations is when the troops are most at risk from killing themselves.

They're saying the suicides aren't stress-related though. Okay. Whatever. And if most of them occurred after the "end of major combat operations", it looks suspicious that the stress they were under was bearable as long as they thought they might make it out and go home.

Suicide is, of course, a complex issue, and a speculative one at that. There's no way to know if these people would have committed suicide even if they had not been involved in the war. But this is an interesting quote:

"If you look at the suicide stats during any war, including Vietnam, and you look at civilian stats, there’s not a big difference." -- Dr Carl Bell, a psychiatrist and suicide specialist at the University of Illinois-Chicago

With roughly 130,000 US troops stationed in Iraq, there was a likelihood of at least a few suicides, said Dr Thomas Hicklin, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.

"When you have a bunch of people you’re going to have some naturally-occurring suicides," Hicklin said, adding that the current number of suicides in Iraq is in line with US suicide rates in the general population.

That's really a meaningless comparison. A better question would be, is the rate of suicides in the war greater than the rate in the general military population. Another factor that makes it meaningless is that it doesn't compare the number of deaths from any cause to the number of suicides, nor a very important factor: the risk of dying. (And by what method - which is likely to have at least some influence on a person's mental state.)

In a report just last month, the issue of comparative statistics is further explored:

Whether the suicide rate among the troops should be considered high is impossible to say because there is nothing to compare it with, experts say. What would be considered a "normal" rate for an all-voluntary military force of men and women on extensive deployments to the Middle East, under constant pressure from guerrillas who use terror tactics?   article

Similar to Viet Nam, perhaps? (Sorry, I don't know those figures - can't seem to find them. I thought that would be any easy search. I find a lot of stats, but not suicides while serving in Viet Nam.)

[The same army spokeswoman, Martha] Rudd said that by the Army's calculations, its suicide rate in Iraq is roughly 12 per 100,000 -- well below the civilian suicide rate for U.S. men which is 17.5 suicides per 100,000. The comparison is misleading, however.

The civilian rate is an annual figure, and the Iraq figure covers only about seven months.

Unless the rate was dramatically increased by a large spate of suicides between these two reports, the "roughly 12 per 100,000" was actually 15.6 per 100,000 - still below 17.5, but much closer. And still a meaningless comparison. Beside the fact that civilian life and military life are two disparate variables, another problem comparing military suicide rates with civilian is that the numbers in the military are not comprised of a constant population - soldiers leave and new soldiers arrive. Maybe there is a tendency for suicide-prone people not to enter the military. Or maybe it's something else. There are simply too many variables to make a meaningful comparison.

Here's another thought: How many suicides will occur after the soldiers finish their tour of duty? Will we know? Check this article for some ideas.

I probably ought to throw this in just to complicate the question, since there are a number of issues in this war related to drug use - not illegal, but military administered: An anti-malarial drug the soldiers are being give - mefloquine, a.k.a. Lariam - has been implicated as having neurological side effects.

Anyway, another interesting quote from Dr. Bell:

"I don’t think we really have enough information about what’s going on over there to know what the hell is happening."