Services wrestle with rise in suicide rates - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Services wrestle with rise in suicide rates

With all the services’ suicides rates increasing last year, lawmakers are growing concerned about whether the trend is an indication of deeper problem within the ranks.

“This suicide rate issue is the canary in the mine, in a sense,” said Rep. Zach Wamp, R- Tenn., as he asked the services’ senior enlisted advisers for their thoughts about the reasons for the increase.

The Army’s increase in suicide rates for four consecutive years is an indicator of the stress being placed on the force by two high-tempo wars, Sergeant Major of the Army Kenneth Preston told the House Appropriations subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs at a hearing Wednesday.

In 2008, 128 soldiers committed suicide, with investigations continuing into 15 additional possible suicides.

“I say it’s the tempo,” Preston said. “It’s the pace, it’s the dynamics of all the things that are occurring in young people’s lives.”

In the Army’s analysis of the suicides, he said, “failed relationships” as a byproduct of the operations tempo also plays a role.

“As I travel around the Army, the biggest question that I get from young soldiers and families is, ‘When are we going to see more than 12 months of dwell time between deployments?’ ” he said.

While one-third of the soldiers who committed suicide had never deployed, he said the units that stay behind “are also working very hard.”

“It’s packing up and moving from one location to another. It’s selling their house, trying to get out of an upside-down mortgage. It’s moving their children from one school to another school,” he said.

More than half of soldiers who have committed suicide in recent years had been back from deployment for more than a year, he said.

The Marine Corps has also seen an increase in suicides, said Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton Kent. “We are concerned — we went from 33 in 2007 to 41 in 2008,” he said. “We think that the small-unit leaders are the ones closer to these young Marines. So we’re educating our corporals and sergeants so they’ll know the symptoms and they know how to get help for these young warriors.”

Kent said wartime stress is one reason why “we want to grow the force fast, and we are, so we can get the Marines more dwell time back in the rear. Right now they are seven months deployed and they are seven months back.”

The Navy also had a “slight increase” in suicides, to 39, in 2008, said Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Rick West. Financial issues were a factor, he said.

About 39 percent of the sailors who committed suicide last year were facing disciplinary action, he added.

West said the Navy has been setting up support programs such as operational stress control, and has also ramped up its financial counseling programs.

Air Force leadership is also concerned about the suicide rate, said Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Rodney McKinley. “For the last 10 years, our average was 9.7 per 100,000,” he said. “But right now, it’s up to 12.3. That’s a significant rise for us.”

Relationship issues loomed large in a big percentage of the suicides, he said.

The services have been hiring more mental health professionals, which is difficult in the face of a nationwide shortage, the senior enlisted advisers said.

“This past year, we hired 191 of the 254 we had planned for,” Preston said.

The Marine Corps is putting mental health specialists in forward-deploying units, Kent said.

While they are making progress, he said, “we still have a shortage” of such specialists.

The Navy has had an aggressive push to increase the number of specialists, and is using all available assets, including chaplains, to help with counseling, West said.

The Air Force has 400 mental health professionals who are trained by national experts in advanced post-traumatic stress disorder treatment techniques, McKinley said. The Air Force has other programs to help, but he said he thinks the most important thing for airmen is “the people they work with being able to recognize when someone’s behavior has changed, and be able to take that through the chain of command and get that person help.”

Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, R-Fla., said he is glad the services are aware of the problems, and are doing something about it, but there is more work to do. “The availability of professional counseling is really a major problem,” he said.

“This is not a pleasant subject, dealing with suicides and dealing with these stress issues, but it’s real,” Young said. “I think even Congress has probably overlooked it for too long and hoped that it would go away. But it’s not going to go away.”