Say Anything Blog

The media, always looking for yet another negative headline to run about our military and/or the war (remember when they were erroneously reporting that the war in Iraq was turning our veterans into murderers?), is exaggerating the problem with suicides among Army soldiers.

WASHINGTON - As many as 121 Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007, a jump of some 20 percent over the year before, officials said Thursday.

The rise comes despite numerous efforts to improve the mental health of a force stressed by a longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the most deadly year yet in the now six-year-old conflict in Afghanistan.

Internal briefing papers prepared by the Army’s psychiatry consultant early this month show there were 89 confirmed suicides last year and 32 deaths that are suspected suicides and still under investigation.

More than a quarter of those — about 34 — happened during deployments in Iraq, an increase from 27 in Iraq the previous year, according to the preliminary figures.

A 20% increase in suicides over last year means an increase of about 20 or so deaths.  Given that of the deaths being used to reach that 20% increase number, over thirty of them are unconfirmed is this really the epidemic it’s being made out to be?  Or just another case of the media sensationalizing and exaggerating bad news?

Recently yearly crime statistics were released for the small town I live in, and among the statistics released was news that car thefts had increased something like 80% over the previous year.  Which by itself sounded really bad, but when you consider that the entire 80% increase (which constituted 7 actual incidents) was all attributable to the same group of rowdy teenagers who had already been caught and punished it isn’t as bad.

That’s sort of how I see this.  I don’t like the idea of troops killing themselves any more than anyone else, but we’re dealing with numbers so low here that even a marginal increase in the number of suicides is going to lead to a big jump in the suicide percentages.

Yes, suicides went up.  Yes, a 20% increase sounds bad.  But the overall suicide number is still so low, even with this increase, as to be inconsequential.

Unless you’re an anti-military, anti-war journalist looking for a sensational headline.