Monday, July 23, 2012

One every 80 Minutes

Though the suicide rate is one a day for active duty military personnel, it is actually one every 80 minutes for all U.S. veterans from all wars.

Here are the statistics regarding active duty personnel. More soldiers have killed themselves than have died in the Afghan war. There is an 18% increase in suicides in the last year. 95% of the suicides are male. 95% are enlisted. 80% are white. 47% are under 25. 41% had received outpatient behavioral health services. 34% communicated the intent to die to someone. 30% had failed an intimate relationship in the prior month. 20% were prescribed antidepressants. 14% had previously injured themselves. All of these statistics are from Time magazine July 23rd 2012

I wrote an article with information that is historical about soldiers for thousands of years to try to bring a useful perspective to military suicides because they are nothing new. Like I said in the following article, "Just because you can survive the horrors of war does not mean you can then survive civilian life!" In fact, what it takes to survive the horrors of war often is the exact opposite of what you actually need to survive civilian life. And this I believe is one of the keys to all the suicides.
One Suicide a Day

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