Last week, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its 2014 calendar year Suicide Event Report (DoDSER), which details the number of suicide attempts and deaths for U.S. service members.
The numbers are startling.
In all of 2014, a total of 55 US troops, in both hostile and non-hostile situations, lost their lives in foreign occupations. The number of soldiers who killed themselves is nearly 5 times that amount.
According to the DoD report, in 2014, there were 269 deaths by suicide among active component service members (compared to 259 deaths by suicide in 2013).
The leading cause of death for active duty military is not the foreign troops, it’s themselves.
14 comments:
NO!!! Big PHARMA and the anti depressants they push are killing these men.
I get shot down here every time I mention that our kids who have taken an oath to defend our Country and Constitution are being used as Capitolist whores in the drug and arms trade, yet the fact is here in our faces that for every dead warrior, FIVE fellows kill themselves over it?
And I'm the one here that is totally WRONG????????
Bis oil and Big Pharma are not involved?
REALLY?PULEEEEASE argue me on this!
Because we have given kids all of this "Sensitivity" crap in grade school, and "Conflict resolution" crap, we have raised a bunch of pansies.
As a veteran of marine barracks bombing 10-23-83 there's no training that prepares you for body parts being blown in every direction. If you think all of us were strong enough to surpress this your sadly mistaken
Okay, Steve, being that you want to start a spat, I'll oblige.
The problem is partly to do with the hand out anti-depressants like candy; however, there's more to it.
For one thing our oil comes from Canada and Venezuela. Please fact check this so you don't repeat the err again.
Second, the VA doesn't have the money to properly care for soldiers coming back from combat AND some are right here when they say that perhaps the over coddling has something to do with the over sensitive training kids get from toddlerhood onward.
Kids are not required to help out around the home anymore. They're handed everything on a platter and they have mommy and daddy calling up universities when they fail classes. Mommy and Daddy can't go to Middle East and complain to the opposition about beating up on Johnny. Today's youth doesn't even go outside and play anymore. Instead they sit in front of a computer playing video games or watching the Kardashians and get get 'reality' bent visions of a pseudo-life. So their physical prowess is diminished if not non-existent.
Big Pharma does play a role but then you've got to blame doctors, too. After all, we don't go to J&J for check-ups and therapy sessions. No, you go to doctors for that.
Perhaps its the boredom or complacent upbringing that leads kids to a lifetime of discontent. Perhaps they're pissed because they have to get a real job in order to enjoy the toys of their youth. Who knows. But it is a statistical fact that our veterans are committing suicide at an alarming rate. The problem is, you can't get them tell you why they did because they're no longer here to explain.
However, that being said, one thing we can do is encourage legislators to take better care of the people who have served their country like they did back in the old days. Giving them quality benefits and continued education breaks in order to deal with post-military life.
Instead, what's happening now is Obama has taken billions OUT of the VA and put it into programs giving the refugees housing, education and healthcare. Get the picture?
9:38PM makes an excellent point. It takes a certain kind of person to withstand combat and gore of war. It's not for everyone. However, the armed forces can't really prepare one for this type of experience and the vetting happens in the field.
However, as I said above, the young people today are also raised in a very soft environment that shelters them way too much and doesn't make them accountable in any way. Thus, going into a forward area is much more foreign to them than say officers of your day.
Interestingly enough, troops are better prepared today to fight in foreign environs due to training that was not around during the Vietnam war. Some of the biggest problems in Vietnam was lack of training in that type of environment as well as the lack of understanding the Vietnamese culture.
But as 9:38PM stated, it's very true, many do not have the psychological makeup to internalize or deal with the atrocities of war and active combat.
Your point is valid. Some of the meanest of mean baddest of bad struggled to maintain a level of dignity and composure after our ordeal. I can see your point about the youth of today and how pampered we are as a society as a whole. This type of exposure and experience is not for the sheltered and protected politically correctness of today
10:20PM, I hadn't thought about it, but you're right again, it is a PC-riddled society that also causes soft complacency and appeasement in the light of sheer violence. Look at how the kids dismiss their racists cult heroes like Kenye and Beyonce!
It is my understanding that the military performs medical experiments on enlisted men.
History has exposed the inhuman acts of the US government. I believe Gulf War Syndrome was caused partially by the vaccines given to soldiers. Many of them became ill but never saw combat.
Nobody comes back the same as they went in. Nobody. The world is seen through a different lens after being in battle or being exposed to the aftermath of battle day after day in some of the worst hellholes on the planet, occupied by some of its biggest screaming idiot savages, the ones who want to take over the world.
Thornton, points well taken, and agreed, but if we send them into that battlefield and have so many "rules of engagement" that prevents them from achieving victory and only allowing them to experience death of their fellows, how are we not destroying their psyche?
Mr. thorntoncrowe,
I'm curious , have you ever served in a combat situation?
You seem to have some comments that are interesting.
Let me paint you a picture, Thornton. You recruit a young man telling him he's able to protect his Country and Constitution from foreign invaders, train him to be strong, invincible, and to snipe, camo, cover. drive and make best use of military equipment, then send him off to the Hellholes mentioned above.
He sees Mr. Muhammad planting a roadside bomb from 300 yards away, but since Muhammad is not actually trying to engage him, the "rules" only allow him to take Muhammad prisoner and tell him hiw impolite it is to plant roadside bombs. Meanwhile, he hears an explosion nearby and sees his buddy laying on the ground in three pieces screaming and gurgling in his own blood, and his CO is standing there saying, "That's the rules of engagement."
Maybe a total exaggeration, but I hope you can pick up on what I'm putting down.
Oh, and he can't engage that poppy farmer over there, either. He has to let him harvest his crop so the heroin can see its way to your kids at home, where you are not allowed to go home and protect from that.
To think this young man is going to come home in one piece mentally is ludicrous. And, we are never allowed to "win"?
Amen!!! We aren't sent there to win or conquer anything except to push through the next budget and fatten the wallets of the top 1%. Good friend had his son in Afghanistan and was not allowed to even have his weapon loaded until given order by CO, how's that for BS
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