One Suicide a Day

The latest cover of Time Magazine June 23, 2012 says, "One a Day" referring to the daily suicides of military personnel that have seen active duty in  Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and 2002.

To understand all this better maybe a historical perspective might be useful. Also, in addition to young men it is also young women from the military who are veterans who are killing themselves too. So, what is happening isn't limited to young men in their 20s.

Historically, young men joined the military to fight for their nation often as a way to commit suicide honorably for thousands of years. Their choice to do this was often caused by the girl they loved loving someone else or marrying someone else. And so joining the military to die for a good cause was a way to cope with this loss. Also, many men were born poor and this was a way to survive an unfriendly world and to elevate their status or to die trying. Also, joining the military might be a place for people who psychologically wanted to hurt others or themselves because they had been hurt growing up a lot by those who had raised them or who hadn't treated them right growing up.

This is all historical so no one should be surprised about any of this. But, it is important to add this into the mix because without it it all makes a lot less sense.

So now, in the past 10 years or so, people who volunteered and joined the military have found themselves in a type of quagmire in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who volunteered were not allowed in many cases to retire gracefully and were called up again and again and again to the point where almost all of them had severe post traumatic stress disorder and became dysfunctional as everyday citizens. And to add to this many of them lost limbs, had severe head injuries etc.

And though there were many more veterans after the Viet Nam War (50,000 soldiers died and 250,000 were physically wounded) and countless others became permanent walking wounded.

So, this is not the first time that soldiers killed themselves like this after battle. This happened a lot after World War II and the Viet Nam War too. So, what is happening is not unusual at all historically.

What is unusual is the number who survived really traumatic brain injuries and single or multiple loss of limbs and likely because of ever increasing quality of medical care in future wars and battles the numbers of people surviving really awful situations with multiple limbs gone, serious brain trauma as well as post traumatic stress disorder will likely increase. It is only logical. So, the real problem is that as long as there are wars or police actions, soldiers both male and female will be driven to commit suicide. And though this is awful and horrific I don't think anyone should be surprised because it is just a fact of life. Even if someone survives the horrors of war it doesn't mean that they can also survive civilian life.

However, most people I believe with supportive family and friends and medical care likely can in multiple ways overcome the horrific things that they have been through and find some good and useful way forward in their lives. But, I think being surprised that many take their own lives because it is just too much for them to cope with is just a natural consequence of the horrors of war.

All wars create many psychological and physical problems for people. For example, look at Syria and all the walking wounded that might survive that war. Likely people there will be traumatized for 100 years or more in that culture because the rest of the world doesn't know how to help without starting World War III.