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Yousif Kashat Mr.Kowal Applications of Composition 20, December 2012 The True After Math of War James Weigl, one of many who unfortunately took their life.

The rate of suicides in the United States from the early 1990 to 2003 was relatively constant, hanging at 10 suicides per every 100,000 soldiers per year. This rate of suicides is half the rate of civilian suicides and a half the amount of suicides for teenagers. Unfortunately, in 2004 there was a spontaneous spike in the rate of suicides causing the numbers to more than double to about 21 suicides per every 100,000 soldiers per year. The statistics however were not constant according to all of the departments of the US Army. The Navy and Air Force began to level off, however, the rate of active- duty soldiers as well as the National Guard continued to rise. The rate of suicides as it was before Iraq and Afghanistan remained twice as much. The rate of suicides got reporters in the habit of calling the situation a national epidemic. This increased rate of suicides had to be answered by the militaries highest officers. Five officers were sent from each departments to discuss possible solutions or better yet the cause of the tragedy. For the next six years they began to better understand the cause and tried to prevent the effects to prevent further suicides.

In the last three years, the Department of the Army and the Department of Defense each created task forces charged with the singular mission of better understanding the precipitants of

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military suicideespecially those that may be unique to this particular population. The task forces have looked at multiple issues, including mental health and medical care, screening, and personnel selection. The two reports published by the task forces contain several hundred recommendations, including better military-wide education about the realities of suicide, standardized treatment protocols for at-risk soldiers, and expanded primary health screenings that will include behavioral health assessments. In addition, the Army and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) are cosponsoring an ongoing $50 million study known as the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers, or STARRS. The ultimate goal of this study is to develop data-driven methods for mitigating or preventing suicidal behaviors and improving the overall mental health and behavioral functioning of soldiers during and after their Army service.5 But even as the military moves vigorously to implement key recommendations, including better education and training in the armed forces from the leadership down, the suicide rate remains stubbornly high.

The Army has assembled some very good data on completed suicides from the last 10 years, partially in result of a change in its data-collection practices. The use of the routine psychological autopsy ended in 2001. The psychological autopsy was a long narrative seeking to describe the motivation for suicide in the deceased. Now formal psychological autopsies are mandated only when the cause of the death is undetermined.

The Army Suicide Event Report, or ASER, replaced the psychological autopsy. Implementation of the ASER, which began in 2003, gradually grew more robust, collecting data not only about the manner of death but also about events and factors thought to be involved with the suicide. ASERs have been performed for all active-duty soldiers who died by suicide since

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about 2004. The ASER is a Web-based quantifiable instrument, with data fields including demographic and clinical information, as well as information about the cause and manner of death. Thus it is easy to sort the information in numerous ways. Data on all known active-duty Army suicides are entered into an automated system and published as a composite report. The ASER later expanded its scope to include suicides from all the services, and was re-named the DoD Suicide Event Report, or DODSER, implemented in 2005. Similar to the former composite ASER Report, data on all known active-duty suicides from all the services are entered into an automated system and published as a composite report.8

In addition, over the last 10 years, a number of epidemiological consultation teams (EPICONs) have conducted reviews at Army bases that have experienced high suicide or homicide rates. And staff assistance visits and other investigations have contributed to the search for information as to the causes of suicide. Mental Health Advisory Teams (MHATs), led by Army researchers from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), have administered surveys in Iraq and Afghanistan roughly once a year. These anonymous surveys ask about depression and PTSD symptoms, as well as barriers to care. Several of them, especially the fifth one, MHAT V, looked very closely at suicides in the theater of war. I was part of a suicide assistance visit to Iraq in 2007, when the suicide rate there was peaking.

For at least the last 20 years, the highest risk factors for committing suicide in the military were being young, white, and male. Of course, given that the vast majority of service members are young and male, those data points were not particular surprising. There have been relatively few completed suicides among women (usually two to three a year, although one year the number peaked at nine). Being Caucasian, rather than black or Hispanic, is also a risk factor.

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Both old and new research has highlighted clear precipitants in the majority of military suicides, especially relationship breakups and getting in trouble at work. For years, about twothirds of suicides appeared to be triggered by a breakup, and another third involved a humiliating event at work, threatening the job. In many cases, both factors are in play, so the percentages are not mutually exclusive. Typically a humiliating event appears to trigger the self-destructive behavior. That event might include relationship difficulties with parents or members of the unit, not just with romantic partners. A recently published article, which I coauthored, documents the data from known suicides in the Army from 2003 to 2009, which support the idea that military suicides are often relatively impulsive, again related to a psychosocial imminent stressor or stressors. The article also highlights the stress load, as defined by the accumulation of multiple stressors, including relationship breakups, job difficulties, and physical problems that many soldiers experience during their active-duty careers.

This stress load may not be directly related to frequency or length of deployments. While many expected the data to show that frequent deployments could be linked to suicide risk, the data did not support that theory, as 79 percent of the suicides recorded by the Army in fiscal year 2009 were soldiers who had completed only a single deployment or had not deployed at all.3

One emerging factor that requires further study is the contribution of chronic pain and physical disability. Chronic pain and physical limitations seem to be the precipitants for suicide among a number of older soldiers and those of higher rank. Good quantifiable data on pain as a contributing factor are lacking, as information about pain is not always coded well in the ASERs. Perhaps counter intuitively, suicides among those who have major injuries are rare; more often a minor injury or backache contributes to depressive symptoms, a belief that one cannot be the

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Soldier I used to be, and irritability. Although depressive symptoms may be present in these cases, they may not meet the criteria for a formal diagnosis of depression.

The vast majority of service members who commit suicide do not have a documented or ascertainable major mental illness. This conclusion is based on the individual ASER report prepared for each soldier, which examines existing medical and mental health data, as well as the cumulative published ASER and DODSER reports. This conclusion is clearly not the case in the general population, where suicide is linked to major psychiatric disorders, especially depression and bipolar disorder. Substance abuse disorders do accompany suicides in both populations. While it is possible that service members have simply not yet been diagnosed with a disorder (due to their youth or to the stigma involved with mental illness in the military), the data suggest that military suicides are more impulsive rather than linked to psychiatric disease. However, it is certainly possible that PTSD or undiagnosed depression contributes to the suicidal impulses.