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March 8th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) — Suicides among U.S.
soldiers rose 80 percent from 2004 to 2008, an Army study found.
As many as 40 percent of these suicides may have been linked to combat
experience in Iraq, yet nearly a third of the soldiers who committed
suicide saw no combat at all, said the researchers, from the U.S. Army
Public Health Command.
“Our study confirmed earlier studies by other military researchers that
found increased risk of suicide among those who experience mental-health
diagnoses associated with the stresses of war,” said lead researcher
Michelle Canham-Chervak, a senior epidemiologist with the command.
“This study suggests that an army engaged in prolonged combat
operations is a population under stress, and that mental-health conditions
and suicide can be expected to increase under these circumstances,”
Canham-Chervak said. “By establishing that soldiers who are diagnosed with
a mental-health disorder or substance abuse are at greater risk of
suicide, we then have a place to target our prevention strategies.”
The report was published in the March 7 online edition of the journal
Injury Prevention.
The findings are based on analysis of data from the U.S. Army
Behavioral Health Integrated Data Environment, a registry containing
information — including consultations, diagnoses and treatment — on
suicides from many military sources.
This analysis found that the rates of suicide among Army personnel from
1977 to 2003 were mostly in keeping with trends in the general population,
and were actually slightly lower than expected in that 27-year period, the
researchers said.
In 2004, however, suicides started to increase. By 2008 they had risen
by more than 80 percent, to a rate higher than in the civilian
population.
In 2007 and 2008, 255 soldiers on active duty took their own lives,
which is equivalent to a suicide rate of 20 per 100,000 people, compared
with a rate of 12 per 100,000 among the general population, the
researchers found.
Historical trends for military suicides, compared with 2008 rates,
suggested that 39 percent of the suicides might be associated with service
in Iraq, where the United States began military action in 2003, or
Afghanistan, the researchers said.
Almost half (45 percent) of those who took their lives were between 18
and 24 years old. More than half (54 percent) were among low-ranking
soldiers. And 69 percent had been in active combat, researchers said. Male
soldiers were at higher risk.
The soldiers who committed suicide were more likely to have been
diagnosed with a mental illness in the year before their suicide, the
researchers found.
Suicide rates among those hospitalized for mental-health problems were
more than 15 times higher than among those who weren’t hospitalized. For
soldiers who had outpatient consultations for mental problems, the suicide
rate was almost four times higher.
The increase in the suicide rate appears related to increased rates of
depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance abuse, personality
and adjustment disorders, and serious mental illness, the researchers
said. Those with severe depression were more than 11 times more likely to
take their lives, and those with anxiety disorders were 10 times more
likely to do so, the researchers found.
“A troubling finding was that over 25 percent of the soldiers who
committed suicide carried a primary diagnosis of an adjustment disorder,”
said Simon Rego, supervising psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center in
New York City. “Adjustment disorder” is a catchall term for emotional
problems resulting from being in a stressful environment, such as
combat.
“[Adjustment disorder] is generally used as a short-term diagnosis
and/or when a more precise diagnosis has not been identified,” Rego said.
“[It] is especially prevalent among military trainees.”
Researchers also found that 31 percent of suicides were committed by
soldiers who had never deployed, which implies that mental problems and
stress other than combat exposure may contribute to suicide risk in this
population, Rego said.
“While suicide remains a relatively rare event, the results of this
study suggest it is increasing at an unprecedented rate and, unlike any
other time in history, U.S. military suicide rates now appear to have
surpassed those among comparable civilian populations,” he said. “It is
therefore critical that we address this emerging public-health problem by
focusing our efforts on studies like this one, which allow us to identify
any and all risk factors for suicide, in order to improve our prevention
efforts.”
More information
To learn more about suicide, visit the U.S.
National Library of Medicine.
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