Having just emailed my doctor, The Boutiqueur, about an impending internal combustion conflagration, one of the many "helpful" medical articles on his website caught my eye:U.S. Soldier Suicides Spiked in January
There was a sharp increase in U.S. soldier suicides in January, with seven confirmed and 17 suspected suicides, Army officials said Thursday.
If all 24 cases are confirmed as suicide, the toll would be greater than the number of U.S. troops killed in action in January in both Iraq (four deaths) and Afghanistan (12 deaths), Agence France Presse reported.
Last week, the Army revealed that suicides among active duty soldiers reached a record high in 2008 for the second year in a row. There were as many as 143 suicides last year and 115 in 2007.
"The trend and trajectory seen in January further heightens the seriousness and urgency that all of us must have in preventing suicides," Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, said in a statement, AFP reported.
Last week, Chiarelli said special army-wide training sessions to boost
suicide awareness among soldiers and their leaders would begin Feb. 15.
The first thought that springs to mind, after shaking the head in sadness, then anger, is to wonder why this information is being filtered to us through Agence France Presse in lieu of the New York Times, the Washington Post... the Stars and Stripes.
This upset me so much, too (well, not the news source, which I didn't realize, but the rest).
ReplyDeleteI did a wee bit of googling, but really have no more info either--it's just what you'd expect--surprise, surprise.
Well, what I found actually just enraged me further: the army says the numbers, the percentages of soldier suicides, while up, are not much higher than the national average.
But that's evil twaddle. The national average includes everybody. The average for otherwise healthy people in their twenties is NO WAY anywhere near that high.