Society's Child
Earlier this month, military authorities announced that suicides amongst active-duty soldiers had slowed in 2010, while suicides amongst reservists and people in the National Guard had increased. It was proof, they said, that the frequent psychological screenings active-duty personnel receive were working, and that reservists and guardsmen, who are more removed from the military's medical bureaucracy, simply need to begin undergoing more health checks. This new data, that American soldiers are now more dangerous to themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the face of any suggestion that things are "working." Even if something's working, the system is still very, very broken.
One of the problems hindering the military's attempt to address soldier suicides is that there's no real rhyme or reason to what kind of soldier is killing himself. While many suicide victims are indeed afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after facing heavy combat in the Middle East, many more have never even been deployed. Of the 112 guardsmen who committed suicide last year, more than half had never even left American soil.
"If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know," Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, "because we don't know what it is."
Reader Comments
no such thing as a soldier doing the right thing. A few days before we got discharged we torn off our stripes. Any questions ?
and you won't like the answer, or believe it, or do anything about it, but you did ask. I know the answer because I continue to fail to kill myself mostly out of spite and varmity orneriness. Mostly I promise myself that a good soldier goes out taking as many enemy as he can with him. 'Course that takes some planning, and once I get going with the planning, then the suicidal urge passes...
But that's not what you asked about, you asked about the one thing and it is funny enough just one thing although it goes by several names: bullying, relentless harassment, torment, torture (psychological, torture still according to Geneva Convention), stalking, etc. And they let you know plainly that the only way it is ever going to stop is if you join them, tormentors, or else kill yourself. See, that's what they mean by, "joining the cult." Not that you choose to believe their psychobabble, no, rather that you willingly play a part in the systematic tearing apart of someone else's psyche. "Take her," said Winston.
All your suicides are the real heroes: soldiers willing to die to fail to do what's wrong.