Utah base dealing with rash of suicides - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Utah base dealing with rash of suicides

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s Hill Air Force Base has hired a psychologist to deal with a rash of suicides, mostly among civilians complaining of harsh working conditions.

Nearly 75 percent of the people at the base are civilian employees or contractors, and they make up 21 or 22 of at least 25 confirmed suicides since 2006, according to its senior ranking officer, Maj. Gen. Andrew Busch, commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center.

Two civilians and one airman committed suicide so far this year.

“We have a suicide trend that we need to address, and we are taking action on it,” Busch said Monday.

It wasn’t clear if 25 suicides since 2006 among a population of 22,000 people at the base was statistically significant. Some media reports have said that figure is several times the rate for Utah’s broader population, but Busch said he wasn’t familiar with the analysis.

Nor could Busch explain why suicides among civilians were more prevalent at Hill than for servicemen. Hill’s airmen don’t seem affected by suicide as much as soldiers, who killed themselves in war zones of Iraq or Afghanistan at the highest rate on record during 2008, according to the Army. The Pentagon said it would be months before the 2009 figures for suicides in the military were available.

Busch said Hill’s civilian jobs — largely maintaining fleets of fighter jets — were demanding, but that many factors appear to contribute to the civilian suicides, including family and substance abuse problems that can be hard to decipher even after the fact.

“From what we’ve seen, there is no single cause,” he said.

The Air Force has stepped up prevention efforts. Last week, the 309th Maintenance Wing “stood down” as supervisors addressed the suicide problem with employees for three hours, he said. Employees of the 309th account for a majority of Hill’s suicides.

The base installed 13 “Wingman advocates” starting in 2007 to steer troubled Hill personnel to help. It also employs chaplains, provides an employee assistance program and hired a psychologist a few months ago to address the problem at an institutional level.

Superiors also are trying to improve employee morale.

“Our approach has been broad,” he said.

Bonnie Carroll, a military widow who founded the advocacy group Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, said suicides also have been a problem at Fort Campbell, an Army base straddling Kentucky and Tennessee.

Early in 2009, Fort Campbell was reporting more suicides than any other U.S. base. Complete numbers weren’t immediately available Monday.

The Defense Department has added thousands of mental health professionals to the ranks of the military because of a greater awareness of the suicide problem and pressures of recent wars, Carroll said.

“These are people in very demanding positions or jobs,” Carroll said. “The amount of people seeking behavioral health support has gone up tremendously. The amount of people who understand care is available has gone up. There’s layer upon layer of behavior health providers. They’re really trying to get ahead of this, instead of dealing with it after-the-fact.”