Army Reserve, National Guard Suicides Doubled in 2010
Suicides nearly doubled last year among America's "citizen soldiers" -- Army Reservists and National Guardsmen -- making 2010 the sixth consecutive year that the Army's suicide rate has spiked to record numbers. In some states, more soldiers killed themselves last year than died in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Military officials released the numbers on Wednesday, acknowledging that they're stumped by the persistent rise in soldier suicides, despite new outreach programs.
"If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know," Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli www.armytimes.com/news/20...-sees-big-spike-011911w/" target="_blank">told the Army Times. "Because we don't know what it is."
There was some good news in the data: Suicides among active-duty soldiers dropped slightly, from 162 in 2009 to 156 last year. It was the first such decrease in six years.
But the overall suicide rate across the Army was still up more than 24 percent. The reason was the spike in National Guard and Reservists' suicides. At least 145 such soldiers killed themselves in 2010, nearly twice as many as the year before, when 80 guardsmen and reservists took their own lives. More than half of them were at home in America and never deployed to a war zone, articles.cnn.com/2011-01-...nel-report-rise?_s=PM:US" target="_blank">CNN quoted a senior military official as saying.
The rise in National Guard suicides was most pronounced in the Midwest. Missouri and Texas each reported seven suicides among their Guard troops in 2010 and Wisconsin had six, www.usatoday.com/news/mil...es20_ST_N.htm?csp=34news" target="_blank">USA Today reported. There were five suicides each in the National Guards of Minnesota, Ohio, Arizona, California and North Carolina.
In some of those states, suicides even outnumbered combat deaths. In Missouri and Wisconsin, more guardsmen committed suicide in 2010 than were killed in action during any year since 2001, Army Lt. Col. Jackie Guthrie of the Wisconsin National Guard told USA Today. For example, in Missouri the highest number of combat deaths since then was three, in 2006. But seven guardsmen took their own lives in 2010.
"All of us are stunned by it, and we wished we knew why," Guthrie said. "It is especially hard when it's suicide, when it's someone hurting in our ranks."
Overall, Army troops -- active or inactive status -- committed suicide at a rate of 25 a month in 2010, the Army figures show. That's 301 suicides altogether last year, compared with 242 in 2009. In the past five years, 975 U.S. soldiers took their own lives.
To put those figures in perspective, about 30,000 Americans commit suicide each year, voices.washingtonpost.com...uble_in_national_gu.html" target="_blank">The Washington Post reported.
Officials said they're probing reasons why so many soldiers choose to take their own lives. Unemployment isn't thought to be a reason, Maj. Gen. Raymond Carpenter, the Army National Guard's acting director, told the Army Times. About 85 percent of the guardsmen and more than half of the reservists who killed themselves last year had jobs, he said.
One reason the suicide rate is higher among part-time soldiers might be because they have less regular contact with their commanders and less access to suicide prevention programs, Chiarelli said. Some reservists report for duty only one weekend a month.