The number of suicides among soldiers has declined since the early months of the year, but the Army continues to battle the problem and it remains on track to surpass last year’s record of 140 suicides.
So far this calendar year, the Army has reported 110 active duty suicides. Of those, 71 have been confirmed and 39 are pending a determination.
There were 89 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during the same period in 2008.
Whatever the stress of fighting inflicted on our troops, something else is pushing troops to despair even as deployment tempo declines and as combat tempo in Iraq evaporates.
And the suicide rate isn't even just combat veterans (as I've read elsewhere).
Do our troops, bizarrely enough, have too much time on their hands without the focus of combat? I've long read that combat troops will suffer from this when combat ends (just see the mini-series Band of Brothers for a popular depiction of this behavior). But this doesn't apply to new soldiers in the statistics.
But something needs to be done. It is tragic that soldiers who won't face death in Iraq are now suffering from their own hands.
