Military Suicide

Deployment to war doesn't figure in majority of military suicides

By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times

June 15, 2013, 4:22 p.m.

Latest stats show 52% who killed themselves in 2008-11 weren't in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some experts say many recruits bring mental health issues with them.

Nate Evans had three children depending on him and held down a good job running a hyperbaric chamber at a hospital.

But what he really wanted was to go to war.

In 2008, as the U.S. death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan approached 5,000, Evans became a medic in the Navy Reserve and was assigned to a Marine company.

"He wanted in the trenches," said his wife, Catherine Evans. To her relief, he never deployed to either war.

But that did not save him. Evans, 28, committed suicide last November near his home outside Salt Lake City — one of at least 524 U.S. service members who took their own lives in 2012.

His case was hardly unusual. The most recent Pentagon data show that a slight majority — 52% — of troops who have committed suicide while on active duty were never assigned to Afghanistan or Iraq.

Military suicide epidemic compels survivor families to speak out

by Esther Bergdahl, Medill Reports, June 6, 2013

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Danny Weiss was a casualty of war, but not of combat. 

“You practice saying ‘I lost my son to suicide, he was killed by suicide, gunshot wound to the head,’” Andy Weiss, 59, of Naperville, said. 

“When I first said that, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't stand,” he said. “But it allows you to practice saying the reality, because it's a reality. It's part of your reality.” 

Are multiple concussions driving suicides in the military?

By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2013

Researchers have found that military personnel in Iraq who suffered multiple concussions were far more prone to suicidal thoughts than those who sustained just one such injury or never had a concussion.

And by controlling for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder — well-known risk factors for suicide — the study moves closer to establishing TBI as a significant factor in suicides.

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