Say Anything Blog

I’d be more curious to know how these numbers compare to the population at large for similar age and demographics. 

I do find it kind of damning that the suicide rates haven’t been this high since the Carter years.  At first blush, that can’t be good.

I’d be more curious to know how these numbers compare to the population at large for similar age and demographics.

This, again from Dr. Joyner’s piece, is illuminating:

Marc Danziger, whose son has recently enlisted in the military, has done some calculations and found that the Army suicide rate, even at this peak, is actually lower than for their civilian cohorts. That’s interesting indeed and speaks to the Army’s vetting process and support system.

I do find it kind of damning that the suicide rates haven’t been this high since the Carter years.  At first blush, that can’t be good.

I’d say it isn’t good if we could actually tie the suicide rates to any specific military policy, up to and including deployments to war zones.  But it appears as though the peaks and valleys are completely random, owing more to the personal lives of the soldiers than anything the military is doing.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

One causative factor comes immediately to my mind: The overwhelmingly negative, antimilitary propaganda continually spewed by the MSM, the Dems, and by lefties in general.  The phony accusations against the military by Kerry, Obama, Harry Reid, Pelosi and Murtha can’t be good for morale, especially among the young and impressionable, which is what soldiers are.  It makes the importance of our support even more significant.

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This link indicates that overall suicides in the U.S. are about 10/100,000, but it’s also worth noting that the rates for young men are much higher.

http://www.gunowners.org/fs0404.htm

Here’s one that shows that men have a suicide rate of about 15-20 per 100,000 in the ages of most soldiers.  Again, soldiers have a lower suicide rate than men at large.

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2006/ElderlyWhiteMenAfflictedbyHighSuicideRates.aspx

Moreover, consider that we’re talking only about a few hundred thousand people.  So if the rate is 17.3/100,000, we have a case where about five or ten suicides is the difference between an ordinary year and a horrific year.  Statistically speaking, you cannot differentiate these rates.

Statistically speaking, you cannot differentiate these rates.

True that.

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As Dr. James Joyner points out, the highest suicide rate ever among soldiers took place with the peace-time Army of 1980 under Jimmy Carter:

What’s up with that?  It doesn’t exactly agree that the war is any sort of causative factor, does it?

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That the highest suicide rates were under Carter supports robert’s statement that the suicide rates may have some correlation to morale since that (morale) couldn’t have been very high under the inept Carter administration.

You don’t have to be a moron to be a liberal Democrat but it sure helps.

The regular Say Anythingite Conservatives here seem pretty anxious to dismiss these suicide rates for some strange, unstated reason. It seems to this ignorant old fool to be a knee jerk reaction to defend something and only God knows what they are defending here. While I am a low grade moron, a self-righteous hate monger suffering from rampant paranoia, in my diseased mind it seems to me that if the suicide rates are up in the military something must be causing it and if the cause could be determined, perhaps something could be done to help them.

But the Say Anythingites here absolutely do have vastly superior wisdom, knowledge and intellect than most of us unwashed, illiterate conservative fools; and so I am sure they are all perfectly correct that this is much ado about absolutely nothing and certainly not worth investing any time seriously examining.

Too bad though, seems to me that fighting in combat is stressful enough, if something else was adding to the stress then why not find a way to lighten the emotional load. Notice that to avoid the ire of the Say Anythingites, I carefully avoided any intimation that perhaps our hostilty to religion might play a role.

No matter the age or state of health, for a military man it is always glorious to tilt at windmills, rescue a fair Dulcinea and be a gallant knight in armor in a glorious cause.

Neiman, well said, but the reality here is that all we have is a fairly loose hypothesis and a statistically insignificant uptick in the number of soldiers who take their own lives. 

Now if 75% of soldiers said “I can’t take this camp coffee anymore” or something in suicide notes, then we’d have a way at getting at a significant cause, and something we could fix.  Perhaps such information exists somewhere, but it’s not given here.

As such, it’s premature to worry.  Be concerned about suicide?  Absolutely.  Take care of soldiers to prevent it?  You bet. 

Change the mission based on no clear evidence?  Now there’s a way to get a LOT of soldiers killed, not to mention Iraqis.

Robert Perry: I am not too bright and I don’t want to offend anyone here as they can be a pretty vicious lot, in my foggy brain it still appears to me that everyone posting until my post were trying very hard to totally dismiss these statistics for some unknown reasons.

I could have missed where anyone was using these statistics to justify ending the war, but I am fairly illiterate, so I could have missed it, if so I would be absolutely against that reaction for the reasons you stated much better than I ever could. My only poorly made point was that if the suicide rates have gone up, let us say because of poor moral, then back when I was in the military in ancient times, morale was an important factor in winning a war; and if we identify that as a major factor and that the constant calls to cut and run are even partially behind these increased suicide rates, then the American people need to know about it and tell their elected officials to knock it off.

No matter the age or state of health, for a military man it is always glorious to tilt at windmills, rescue a fair Dulcinea and be a gallant knight in armor in a glorious cause.

I hadn’t considered that we’ve only got about 200,000 soldiers to draw conclusions from, especially given the 17.3 of 100,000.  I’d want to know what the normal year to year variation is but an uptick of 5 - 10 death begins to approach statistical signifigance for me.  (Man, that sounds callous, dickering over how many sigma I’d worry about.)

I try to keep my end times/Revelation theology in check usually but it’s got to be spritually harsh over there.