This video from the USA is called Why Are Record Numbers of US Soldiers Committing Suicide?
From Associated Press:
US Army suicides highest since 1991: report
Thursday Aug 16 12:18 AEST
The number of US Army soldiers who suicided last year was the highest since 1991.
More than one-fourth did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest since the 102 suicides in 1991.
The suicide rate for the army has fluctuated, from last year’s high of 17.3 per 100,000 to a low of 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001.
Last year, “Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts,” the report said.
The 99 suicides included 28 soldiers deployed to the two wars and 71 who were not. About twice as many women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide as did women not sent to war, the report said.
The previous high suicide figures year, 1991 was, of course, the year of the Gulf war.
The previous low figure year, 2001, was the year before the Afghan war started … well, most of it was.
See also here.
And here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Let’s reach our youth BEFORE they’re contaminated!
Join us at the Encampment to Stop the War, September 22-29, and the National March on Washington on September 29.
We will have a Poison Dust tent at the Encampment all week to provide information about Depleted Uranium and help organize to get the word out.
For more information, see http://www.TroopsOutNow.org
Don’t let our kids be guinea pigs!
POISON DUst EDUCATORS’ PACKET
**Order the Poison DUst Educator’s Packet at http://www.iacenter.org/DUeducatorpackets.html
Packet contains 2 different length film versions of Poison DUst, lesson plans, photos, bibliography, class projects, reprints and more.
Three years ago, The Daily News ran a story about reservists returning from Iraq in2004 from the same unit who were suffering from what euphemistically has been called “Gulf War Syndrome.” It turned out that they all had been exposed to radioactive dust during their tour of duty in Iraq. The short term and long term effects of this exposure are slowly emerging into public consciousness.*
The military has yet to acknowledge the severity and the extent of the damage to our young men and women and to their offspring.
Today, half of the 697,000 U.S. Gulf War troops from the 1991 war have reported serious medical problems and a significant increase in birth defects among their newborn children.
The effects on the Iraqi population are far greater.**
Many other countries and U.S. communities near DU weapons plants, testing facilities, bases and arsenals have also been exposed to this radioactive material which has a half-life of 4.4 billions years.
This issue is of particular importance to high school students who are considering joining the military after they graduate. In addition to all the obvious dangers, entering the military today puts them at risk for cancer and all the symptoms associated with radiation and heavy metal poisoning—fatigue, muscle weakness, headaches, to name a few. There is now also ample documentation that exposure to the dust can cause birth defects in their children, the same birth defects that are showing up in Iraqi children.****
What’s in the dust? Depleted Uranium
The military says depleted uranium emits low-level-radiation, and is therefore harmless, but for decades scientists have demonstrated the lethal effects of low level radiation on human beings and their offspring.***
DU is a central component of the U.S. military arsenal.
It is in the tanks, the shells, the bombs. It is used in training as well as in battle. It is almost everywhere the U.S. military stations its troops. Our youth and their loved ones need to know what they face when they go into the military.
Poison DUst is a film that pulls together the crucial information about DU. It includes interviews with veterans contaminated by DU; simple, scientific explanations about the nature of DU and radiation by noted authorities such as nuclear physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, epidemiologist Dr., Sr. Rosalie Bertell and Dr. Helen Caldicott, supplemented by clear, uncomplicated graphics; a visual history of military use of toxic substances affecting troops and target populations; and information about the proliferation of DU. It also discusses what we can do about this crisis.
The full length dvd, released by Lightyear Entertainment in 2006, is available commercially through, Netflix, Amazon.com, Border Books and Leftbooks.com.
Now the producers have compiled a comprehensive Educators Packet of Poison DUst for teachers, parents, veterans, community and anti-war groups, and for use by the youth themselves.
“Students should watch this video because it’s good people know so they can tell their families and let it spread.”
-Shuhana, NYC 12th grader
Order the Poison DUst Educator’s Packet at http://www.iacenter.org/DUeducatorpackets.html
The Poison DUst Educators Packet includes:
• A 30 minute educators’ version of the DVD Poison DUst suitable for classroom viewing
• An 84 minute, full-length Version of Poison DUst, with additional interviews and information.
• Short “primers” and articles with background information and resources
• An online bibliography, with links to a multitude of resources for class projects and research papers through the Poison DUst website, http://www.poisondust.com. Also on the website is a link to the Depleted Uranium Education Project (http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm ), and full chapters from the book, Metal of Dishonor (http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/mettoc.htm ).
• A set of detailed lesson plans for use with a range of audiences and presentation lengths. Some of the lesson plans were developed by NYC teachers and 12th grade students. Not only were the lessons integrated into their high school curriculum, the students themselves then enthusiastically and creatively brought their new knowledge into their communities.
• The students’ DU Outreach Project is also documented in the packet.
• A Photo Gallery of pictures for mounting on chart paper on walls around a room. Students can look at the pictures and captions and write their reactions as part of an introduction before viewing Poison DUst.
• Brainstorming ideas by students and teachers for other possible uses of Poison DUst, as well as student questions and comments.
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Wednesday October 31, 3:22 PM
Iraq, Afghan Vets at Risk for Suicides
Mary Gallagher did not get a knock at the door from a military chaplain with news of her Marine husband’s death in a faraway place. Instead, the Iraq war veteran committed suicide eight months after returning home.
She is left wondering why.
It’s a question shared by hundreds of families of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have taken their own lives in a homecoming suicide pattern of a magnitude that is just starting to emerge.
Preliminary Veterans Affairs Department research obtained by The Associated Press reveals for the first time that there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001 and the end of 2005.
The numbers, while not dramatically different from society as a whole, provide the first quantitative look at the toll on today’s combat veterans and are reminiscent of the increased suicide risk among returning soldiers in the Vietnam era.
Today’s homefront suicide tally is running at least double the number of troop suicides in the war zones as thousands of men and women return with disabling injuries and mental health disorders that put them at higher risk.
A total of 147 troops have killed themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the wars, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center, which tracks casualties for the Pentagon.
Add the number of returning veterans and the finding is that at least 430 of the 1.5 million troops who have fought in the two wars have killed themselves over the past six years. And that doesn’t include people like Gallagher’s husband who committed suicide after their combat tours and while still in the military _ a number the Pentagon says it doesn’t track.
That compares with at least 4,227 U.S. military deaths overall since the wars started _ 3,840 in Iraq and 387 in and around Afghanistan.
In response, the VA is ramping up suicide prevention programs.
Research suggests that combat trauma increases the risk of suicide, according to the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Difficulty dealing with failed relationships, financial and legal troubles, and substance abuse also are risk factors among troops, said Cynthia O. Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Families see the effects first hand.
“None of them come back without being touched a little,” said Gallagher, a mother of three whose husband, Marine Gunnery Sgt. James Gallagher, took his own life in 2006 inside their home at Camp Pendleton, Calif.
He was proud of his Iraq service, but she wonders whether he was bothered by the death of his captain in Iraq or an incident in which he helped rescue a soldier who was in a fire and later died. Shortly before his death, her husband was distraught over an assignment change he saw as an insult, she said.
“His death contradicts the very person he was. It’s very confusing and difficult to understand,” said Gallagher of Lynbrook, N.Y.
The family of another Iraq veteran who committed suicide, Jeffrey Lucey, 23, of Belchertown, Mass., filed suit against the former VA secretary, alleging that bad care at the VA was to blame.
And the family of Joshua Omvig, a 22-year-old Iraq war veteran from Davenport, Iowa, who also committed suicide, successfully pushed Congress to pass a bill that President Bush is expected to sign that requires the VA to improve suicide prevention care.
Suicides in Iraq have occurred since the early days of the war, but awareness was heightened when the Army said its suicide rate in 2006 rose to 17.3 per 100,000 troops _ the highest in 26 years of record-keeping.
That compares with 9.3 per 100,000 for all military services combined in 2006 and 11.1 per 100,000 for the general U.S. population in 2004, the latest year statistics were available. The Army has said the civilian rate for the same age and gender mix as in the Army is 19 to 20 per 100,000 people.
Just looking at the VA’s early numbers, Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s deputy chief patient care service officer for mental health, said there does not appear to be an epidemic of suicides among those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who left the military.
Katz said post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and problem drinking increase a person’s suicide risk by two or three times, but the rate of suicide among those with those conditions “is still very, very low.”
Katz acknowledged, however, that it is too early to know the long-term ramifications for those who served in the wars and said the VA “is very intensely involved in increasing suicide prevention.”
“We’re not doing it because there’s an epidemic in returning veterans, though each death of a returning veteran is a tragedy and it’s important to prevent it,” Katz said.
The VA and Defense Department have hired more counselors and made other improvements in mental health care, including creation of a veterans suicide prevention hotline.
At the VA’s national suicide hotline center based in Canandaigua, N.Y., counselors have taken more than 9,000 calls since July. Some callers are just looking for someone to talk to. Others are concerned family members. Callers who choose to give their names can opt to be met at a local VA center by a suicide prevention counselor; more than 120 callers have been rescued by emergency personnel _ some after swallowing pills or with a gun nearby, according to the center.
“It’s sad, but I think in the other way it’s very exciting because already we’ve seen really sort of people being able to change their lives around because of the access to resources they’ve been able to get,” said Jan Kemp, who oversees the call center.
Penny Coleman, whose ex-husband committed suicide after returning from Vietnam, said she doesn’t buy what she calls the “we didn’t expect this” mentality about suicide.
“If you’d chosen to pay attention after Vietnam you would have and should have anticipated it would happen again,” said Coleman, who published a book on the subject last year.
One government study of Army veterans from Vietnam found they were more likely to die from suicide than other veterans in the first five years after leaving the military, although the study found that the likelihood dissipated over time. There is still heated debate, however, over the total number of suicides by Vietnam veterans; the extent to which it continues even today is unknown.
One major hurdle in stopping suicide is getting people to ask for help. From 20 percent to 50 percent of active duty troops and reservists who returned from war reported psychological problems, relationship problems, depression and symptoms of stress reactions, but most report that they have not sought help, according to a report from a military mental health task force.
“It’s only when it becomes painful will someone seek counseling,” said Chris Ayres, manager of the combat stress recovery program at the Wounded Warrior Project, a private veterans’ assistance group based in Jacksonville, Fla. “That’s usually how it happens. Nobody just walks in, because it’s the hardest thing for a male, a Marine, a type-A personality figure to just go in there and say, ‘Hey, I need some help.'”
While not suicidal, Ayres, 37, a former Marine captain from the Houston area who had the back of his right leg blown off in Iraq, has experienced episodes related to his post-traumatic stress disorder and said he worried about being stigmatized if he got help.
He’s since learned to manage through counseling, and he’s encouraging other veterans to get help.
Ayres is among 28,000 Americans injured in the war, more than 3,000 seriously.
In a study published earlier this year, researchers at Portland State University found that veterans were twice as likely to commit suicide as male nonveterans. High gun ownership rates, along with debilitating injuries and mental health disorders, were all risk factors that seemed to put the veterans at greater risk, said Mark Kaplan, one of the researchers.
While veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were not included in the study, Kaplan said that given the nature of the injuries of the recent wars and the strain of long and repeated deployments, the newer generation of veterans could be at risk for suicide.
Kaplan said primary care physicians should ask patients whether they are veterans, and if the answer is yes, inquire about their mental health.
“This is war unlike other wars and we don’t know the long-term implications and the hidden injuries of war,” Kaplan said.
Dr. Dan Blazer, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center who served this year on the military’s mental health task force, said improvements in care will likely help some veterans, but he’s concerned about this generation. He said he treats World War II veterans still struggling mentally with their military experience.
“There’s still going to be individuals that just totally slip through all of these safety nets that we construct to try to help things in the aftermath,” Blazer said.
Suicide, Blazer said, “is a cost of war. It’s a big one.”
Asociated Press
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