The military establishment revealed that the rate of suicide among its members is the highest it's been in years, in part due to the increased number of months services members are deployed in war zones: (Washington Post)
Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs were factors motivating the soldiers to commit suicide, according to the report.
"In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed" in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, it said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves.
There also "was limited evidence to support the view that multiple ... deployments are a risk factor for suicide behaviors," it said.
Military leaders responded by allowing three more days (from 15 to 18) on furloughs from combat zones. Experts call the number of days off a farce, stating that members of the military should receive one full month off for every three months served.
Selective use of data. The fact is the suicide rate in the Army is well BELOW the suicide rate among the general population. And the suicide rate is very low in the army - we're talking fewer than 100 soldiers in an army of a few million people. With the actual number that low, even a small increase numerically is a large increase in percentage.
That's why the news media chose to go with the percentage - it makes a not-bad statistic look very bad.
Here's the truth:
In 2006, the overall suicide rate for the United States was 13.4 per 100,000 people. It was 21.1 per 100,000 people for all men aged 17 to 45, compared to a rate of 17.8 for men in the Army.
Oops. Once you see the actual numbers, not the percentages, you realize that suicide among soldiers is simply not a big problem. In fact, suicide among soldiers, even among active duty soldiers in the combat zone, is very low and lower than in the general population. You could say that being in combat is actually less likely to lead to suicide than being a civilian.
As James Joyner points out, the current suicide rate in the army is actually LOWER than it was in 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president and we were not at war.
Here's the Link to Joyner's analysis.
Here's more from his analysis:
For that matter, there was a 26% increase in active-duty suicides from 1997 to 1999, during the Clinton administration.
We had a spike of more than 11 percent from 2005 to 2006. That’s huge. But it represents 11 individual soldiers. The preliminary numbers indicate that the rate will likely decline for 2007. That’s despite a surge in the number of soldiers deployed to Iraq and an increase in the combat tempo. If that holds, it almost surely means that the 2006 spike is largely random variation in a complex phenomenon. It’s noteworthy, too, that a study of British Army suicides from 1980 to 2006 shows a decline in recent years which continued through its deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
When you look at the hard numbers, not just the misleading percentage figure, you realize that the latest Democratic anti-war talking point - this war is driving our soldiers to commit suicide! - is yet another weak attempt to mislead the American people.
Posted by: Bill Hobbs | August 17, 2007 10:54 AM | Permalink to Comment