March
12
How can we prevent troops from commiting suicide?
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/16-us-tro...
Use them for a real purpose.
Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for young males .....for teenagers it is the SECOND leading cause of death( more females attempt suicide but more males actually succeed ) over 30,000 Americans commit suicide every year.... in the world....a suicide occurs every 40 seconds
the suicide rate of the military in Iraq was 18.8 per 100,000 in 2003..... it was 19.9 per 100,000 in 2005.... from year to year it has been fairly consistent.... one suicide death is too many......but the rate is NOT abnormal
Suicide is not like the flu......you can not get a shot to prevent it....
The media tries to portray the evil war/ the evil military for creating this problem......BUT the problem exist in civilian life also....
Maybe the problem is our societal attitude toward "mental problems"...... we do not hesitate to get a cast on our broken leg..... but let our mind be injured and we try to hide it..... we are ashamed of it......link that to our tendency to not be concerned when the behavior of others should give us a clue to them having mental problems.....and you have a prescription for trouble
BTW.....do not know where this "story" about 21 suicides in an airborne unit in Iraq came from..... but I can NOT find it verified anywhere?????....
But I think a lot of the problem is that too many join because they just want a job and benefits. They were in dead end jobs before and wanted a better life for themselves and/or family. They didn't understand the true purpose of a military. And that means combat. I think recruiters have a responsibility to ensure that everyone understands what they are getting into. If you don't have that patriotism, then you shouldn't be enlisting. There's no draft.
Whether you agree with this war or not, the troops must follow orders. There may be another war. There may not. But the purpose of the military is not all the excersizes and practice. That is just preparation for the true purpose. I think people forget what it is.
Now the real issue of the question though.
Suicide always appears to be higher in the Military because it is a controlled population that can be monitored. That is why Durkheim used the military in his studies on suicide.
If a person is going to commit suicide, its hard to stop them. People that actually do it generally do not leave signs. People making suicide gestures will leave signs. To spot a real suicide case, you have to really be paying attention since the signs will not be obvious. The best thing you can do is talk to people and educate them. The more contact the person has, the more likely the real signs can be spotted. This gets even more difficult for people that left the military because in the civilian world, fewer people are looking for it. The military is trying to increase awareness, which is the first thing that can be done. Counseling is also being expanded.
For a person outside the military to help, the easiest thing is to see if you can help at VA or base.
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The more I look into you article with searchs, the more and more far fetched it seems to get.... we do not designate our units as "The 57th unit of the Airborne Division." Also this "stargate" reference keeps coming up to it also.
lets please bring our boys home and give them the love , care and support that our nation owes the in return for BRAVE service
As for what you can do, not much. I suppose you can always write to a soldier or send comfort packages or something along those lines, but the chances that it would save someone's life is pretty slim.
Of course when we leave Iraq in a few years this problem will subside a little, but our deployments in Afghanistan will still make this a real problem in our military.
People falsly assume the wars are what cause more people to kill themselves but if a troop is scared of getting killed in the Middle East they will probably go AWOL rather than kill themselves since that would defeat the purpose. A lot of the ones who did kill themselves during deployments did it because they were homesick and couldn't wait until it was time to get home. A few may have came close or actually did it because they found out their spouse back in the US was having an affair on them or their girl/boyfriend sent them a Dear John letter or e-mail.
As for the story you linked, I doubt the authencity of it since I googled it and didn't find a single common news source (CNN, Fox News, etc) report it. Something like that would have made front page of the Army Times and I haven't seen anything on it to this day. While I am aware of troop suicides existing, there are too many leaders over there to allow almost half a platoon's worth of soldiers to attempt a mass suicide and it looks more like propaganda (like the false stories made a few years ago about the military covering up the death toll by putting dead troops in civilian clothes and burying them in the desert). I'm not saying you are trying to spread propaganda but it's hard to trust stories from anti-war webpages and I would trust CNN before I would trust one of them.
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