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ABC News' Luis Martinez reports: The Army has had another bad month for suicides within its ranks with 18 suspected suicides during the month of February. That is a decrease from January's record-high of 24 suspected suicides, but one Army official said Wednesday the number still remains high and "very disturbing."
The Army's in the midst of a month-long training stand-down to help soldiers identify suicidal behavior among their colleagues. That stand-down was prompted by last year's record number of 143 suspected suicides in the ranks, 138 of those have been confirmed as suicides and five remain under investigation as possible suicides. Still, last year's 143 possible suicides were substantially higher than the 115 suicides that occurred in 2007, and the fourth straight year that suicides had increased Army-wide.
Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli and top Army mental health officers released the February numbers during a bloggers conference call this morning. Last month's high numbers prompted the Army to begin releasing monthly suicide statistics.
Chiarelli said trying to reduce the suicide numbers within the ranks, "is one of the hardest problems" he's seen in his 36 year military career and such a complex challenge, "that there is no single solution...suicide is a multi-dimensional problem that requires a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle it."
He also said that the increase cannot be easily explained by conventional wisdom. For example, Chiarelli said he believed that if soldiers had adequate access to mental health providers the numbers would go down. But, he said a review of the numbers showed that 50 percent of those who committed suicide last year had sought out some form of mental health care or counseling and still went ahead to commit suicide.
Chiarelli also explained how on first blush it might appear that soldiers with multiple combat deployments might have the highest suicide numbers, but the opposite seems true. He said suicide numbers are lower among multiple deployers and that they seem to develop a resiliency to the stressful situations they encounter. Furthermore, last year's suicide numbers were split almost evenly into thirds among those who had deployed to combat, those who had come home from combat and those who'd never shipped out overseas.
Stressing how this is "not business as usual and we must move quickly," Chiarelli noted success in helping to remove the stigma of seeking counseling, but said more progress had been made at the officer level than among junior enlisted and junior non-commissioned officers. "That's an issue we have to work hard," said the general.
At one point Chiarelli suggested the issue of unemployment might be a suicide risk factor among National Guardsmen and Army Reservists. He said he had participated in a conference call yesterday that detailed 15 suicide cases and noted that among the cases involving National Guardsmen and Army Reservists, a common theme was the issue of unemployment among the civilian soldiers who had taken their lives. He cautioned later that this was a very small sampling and the difficulties in trying to determine a trend from such a small group.
Other officials also added that the issues that lead to suicide are hard to narrow down to one particular reason. For example, stress over personal relationships is often cited as a major factor, but it might be compounded by other issues like financial distress which again point to the importance of tackling suicides in a multi-disciplinary way.
