The presidential campaign has hardly seen any attention paid to the war we still wage. But it’s unpopular to think that we have men and women on the frontlines as we cozy up in front of the television to see the political jousting and applaud our own democracy while our soldiers still wage a [...]
Time: Battleland – Years now. Almost 11 years into the war in Afghanistan, and with Iraq mostly behind us, we’re still unable to get our hands and our minds around the military suicide rate. July marked the highest number of suicides among soldiers the army has faced. My colleagues Mark Thompson and Cam Ritchie [...]
More US soldiers are losing their lives to suicide than from enemy forces, the Pentagon reports this week. According to findings released on Thursday by the US Department of Defense, the suicide rate for active duty soldiers so far in 2012 is around one per day. In just the first 155 days of the [...]
Responding to Recent Violence Perpetrated by Iraq Veterans SAN FRANCISCO (January 19, 2012) – The tragic violence recently perpetrated by Iraq veterans is being met with widespread response. Reports by friends and family indicate that Benjamin Barnes, who fatally shot a Washington State park ranger, and Itzcoatl Campo, who is accused of stabbing four [...]
Staff Sgt. Brad Eiffert, a veteran of the war in Iraq, found himself in the woods behind his house with a .45 caliber pistol pressed to his head. Meridian Township police were deployed in various defensive positions around Eiffert’s home and in the woods. The stand-off was nearing 3 hours when the officers heard [...]
FORT CARSON, Colo. — Army Cpl. Joshua Smith saw the orange glow against the South Carolina night sky long before he reached his sister’s apartment complex. The fire in the back buildings was intense. People stood in shock, watching the blaze. Smith leapt from his rental car and vaulted a five-foot brick wall, yelling [...]
On Wednesday, President Obama announced that condolence letters would be issued to the families of service personnel who took their own lives while serving their country in combat. Obama’s sudden reversal in policy comes after two long years of charged debate over the issue, but only weeks after the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee [...]
A very important new study by Catherine Lutz at Brown University reports on the very high human costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. This research catalogues the deaths and injuries of military personnel, U.S. private contractors (who make up 54 percent of the total US workforce in Iraq and Afghanistan), as well as non [...]
Recent reports show that over the past five years there has been a 7,000% increase in the number of service members hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. The Military has been criticized harshly over the past few years for their record keeping and incident reporting on the subject of suicide. It’s thought that the dramatic increase [...]
Late last month a young Marine veteran turned advocate took his life after struggling with the scars of war. The veteran community continues to mourn the death of 28 year old Clay Hunt, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Clay’s death is a shocking reminder of the ongoing suicide epidemic in the military [...]
According to the study, female soldiers that are married are less likely to commit suicide. I believe that it is not so much the fact that the female is married, but her family and support system. Family stress can cause a huge burden for females, especially when a deployed female soldier is a single [...]
The study below finds that screening soldiers for mental illness prior to deployment can prevent mental health from becoming and issue in the field. This would seem to be a no-brainer, of course service members who screen positive for PTSD and suicidal tendencies should receive follow up care and not be deployed. In addition, those [...]
Almost six months after the Department of Veterans Affairs relaxed rules for filing post-traumatic stress claims, many men and women returning from Iraq still aren’t getting the care they need and deserve, say counselors and others who work with soldiers. The new regulations, which were issued in July, don’t change how soldiers are diagnosed [...]
To combat rising suicide rates in the military, the Army’s set of “good ideas” isn’t good enough, it said. What’s needed are scientifically proven prevention and screening methods, and to that end the Army announced it will devote $17 million over three years to a research consortium based at Fort Detrick. The U.S. Army [...]
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