The military’s suicide woes are profound enough without a sailor adding to them. Yet that’s just what Petty Office 2nd Class Paul Bricker did. He helped a superior, Chief Petty Office Gerard Curran, kill himself. Their goal: …
Suicide
Soldier Suicides, An Epidemic We Must Defeat
Every day an active-duty member of our Armed Forces commits suicide.
To emphasize the silent, tragic epidemic that is sweeping across the U.S. military, consider this one statistic, which was brought to light in a recent TIME …
Military Tick-Tock
Reconstructing how, and perhaps why, something happened is one of the most rewarding kinds of reporting. It’s called a tick-tock in the trade. Nancy Gibbs and I do it in this week’s Time, retracing the lives and military careers of Army captains Michael McCaddon and Ian Morrison to try and shine a light on what drives soldiers to …
Suicide’s Twin Challenges
It has been a tough couple of months, burrowing into the challenge of military suicides…and repeatedly coming up empty-handed. My editors seemed like Pete Chiarelli when he became the Army’s No. 2 officer nearly five years ago: determined to find a way to halt suicide in the ranks, and frustrated when it proved to be so elusive. It …
Why Is the UK’s PTSD Rate So Much Lower Than the U.S.’s?
Among the most interesting presentations at last week’s DoD-VA Suicide Prevention conference was one titled Time Bombs or Tidal Waves? The View from Blightly. It compared and contrasted the different psychological consequences …
Violence and the Military
The suicide rate in the Army is extraordinarily high. However, the Army is extremely good at tracking Soldiers who have committed suicides. There are rich data on these service members. Common factors are a relationship break-up, …
Suicides Eclipse Car Crashes as Top Non-Combat Cause of U.S. Troop Deaths
For years, motor-vehicle accidents have killed more U.S. troops than any other non-combat cause. There have been safe-driving campaigns on military posts since troops and transportation first got together. “Many military members are young, single, male, and high-school educated,” the Pentagon’s Medical Surveillance Monthly Report …
U.S. Military Suicides in 2012: 155 Days, 154 Dead
New Pentagon data show U.S. troops are killing themselves at the rate of nearly one a day so far in 2012, 18% above 2011’s corresponding toll. “The continual rise in the suicide rate has frustrated all in the military,” says …
Memorial Day 2012: Advancing or Retreating?
I posted my first piece on Time’s Battleland a year ago, troubled by the disconnects between the verbal thanks to America’s veterans — and the rising problems with unemployment and homelessness.
This is too reminiscent of
…
Honor, Stigma…and PTSD
I’m an old guy from the Vietnam era, a psychiatrist who studied violence in the 1960s, who treated survivors of trauma in the ’70s and who helped create and nurture the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder through the …
“I have now come to the conclusion that suicide is an absolutely selfish act. I am personally fed up with soldiers who are choosing to take their own lives so that others can clean up their mess. Be an adult, act like an adult, and deal with your real-life problems like the rest of us.”
Update: The 7,000 Mile Sniper Shot.
I wrote a few weeks ago about Marine Major Jeff Hackett, who killed himself in the aftermath of a collapse following his distinguished 26-year career. Major Hackett’s widow, Danielle was initially denied payment of Jeff’s $400,000 life insurance policy because when times got tough economically for Jeff, he missed a few payments. …
Psychiatrists Pondering PTSD in Philadelphia
Next week is the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, the largest yearly gathering of its kind. It’s exciting because of the prominence military matters are going to get. Last year there were perhaps 15 military-related sessions at the meeting in Hawaii. This year, there’s going to be twice as many …
