“Don’t hit your wife, don’t hit your kids.” That’s what soldiers are being told in their ‘group therapy’ sessions at Walter Reed. Other group sessions include playing bingo and learning how to set a table correctly. Hardly the kind of activity you’d expect for soldiers in dire need of psychiatric help. In 2007 suicides among active-duty soldiers reached their highest levels since records began in 1980. Sadly, 121 soldiers committed suicide last year, a 20 percent gain from 2006 according to an internal study received by The Washington Post. Since the Iraq war began the number of self-inflicted injuries and suicides has multiplied six fold. The 350 soldiers who attempted suicide or self-injury in 2002 pales in comparison to the 2,100 soldiers who made the same attempts in 2007.
“I'm very disappointed with the Army. Hopefully this will help other soldiers," wrote Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, before attempting suicide for the second time.
The unfortunate rise in the number of attempted suicides is blamed primarily on the war “lasting longer than expected.” Individual counseling is still not offered at many Army posts. While Congress has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the Army in an attempt to improve mental health, critics say not enough has been done.
In past conflicts suicide rates have tended to decline, but as soldiers are forced into repeated and longer deployments that trend has reversed. In 2001 the suicide rate sat at 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers, an all time low. That low capsized into an all time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 in 2006. Twice as many soldier suicides took place in the U.S. than in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007.
The recent study was authored by Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, the top psychiatrist in the Army. Suicides and attempted suicides "are continuing to rise despite a lot of things we're doing now and have been doing. We need to improve training and education. We need to improve our capacity to provide behavioral health care,” she said.
More than 200 interviews both overseas and in the U.S. found that common factors in suicides were failed personal relationships, legal financial or occupational problems, and the length and frequency of deployments overseas. The Army admitted that it “still does not know how to adequately assess, monitor and treat soldiers with psychological problems.” The Army’s current suicide prevention program was not even designed for combat environments.
Recently the Army has been attempting to address the problem. New surveys, online videos, and questionnaires are aimed at helping soldiers recognize developing problems. It has hired more mental health providers and has plans to attach more chaplains to deployments as well as assign “battle buddies” for peer support and monitoring.
A former Army psychologist and chairman of the psychology department at Texas Tech University, David Rudd said increasing suicide rates raise “real questions about whether you can have an Army this size with multiple deployments.”
Our military is being stretched to the limit, the physical and mental endurance of soldiers is being pushed beyond reason. More and more soldiers are falling prey to depression and stress and eventually reach the breaking point. Throughout the years of the war in Iraq our soldiers have been subjected to gross negligence, from not having adequate equipment and supplies overseas, to terrible treatment and conditions at home. Now as we ask them to increase the length of their deployments, to endure the Hell of war day in and day out, for an unknown amount of time, the consequences are showing. We are wringing our soldiers dry, taking from them more than they ever agreed.
We expect our soldiers to act with bravery, honor and efficiency. Yet while they live every day on the front, they lack that which they need most.
Said George W. Bush in his last State of the Union address on Monday, “Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen: In the past year, you have done everything we have asked of you, and more. Our Nation is grateful for your courage. We are proud of your accomplishments. And tonight in this hallowed chamber, with the American people as our witness, we make you a solemn pledge: In the fight ahead, you will have all you need to protect our Nation.”
Perhaps instead, he should have apologized. This is not the first time such a promise has been made.
