The U.S. Army recently reported that at least 115 soldiers committed suicide in 2007, the highest number since the army began keeping records in 1980.
Active-duty troops accounted for 93 of the suicides, and the remaining 22 were members of the Army National Guard or Reserve. The numbers for 2007 are a 12.7 percent rise from the previous year, when the army reported 102 suicides. In 2005, 85 suicides were reported.
Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatric consultant to the Army’s surgeon general, stated that factors behind the dramatic increase include “longtime and multiple deployments away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, [and] the easy availability of loaded weapons.”
The Army also noted there were 935 attempted suicides, 166 of them by soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and 22 who were members of the Army National Guard or Reserves who had been mobilized. (New York Times, May 30)
