Suicide, Not Battle, Leading Cause of U.S. Military Deaths

IMAGE SOURCE: conservativerefocus.com

by Cheri Roberts, Challenging the Rhetoric, The Guerilla Media Network

When the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) planned their, “simultaneous theater wars” it is unlikely they and the U.S. Government took into account the mental health of those they’d soon send to fight those wars. The death-toll is staggering and I don’t mean death’s due to military conflicts, but those related to the unchecked and untreated mental-health of those sent to fight.

Suicide is the number one cause of death for military members. 

Let that sink in a moment…

Whose Numbers Are These?

In 2008, the Department of Defense Suicide Event Report (DoDSER) program was launched in support of the DoD suicide prevention initiatives. The DoDSER program is a collaborative undertaking of the DoD’s Suicide Prevention and Risk Reduction Committee, the Services’ DoDSER program managers, and the National Center for Telehealth and Technology (T2). The program standardizes suicide surveillance efforts for the four Services to inform their suicide prevention programs. The standardized reports (DoDSERs) of suicide behaviors (i.e., suicides, suicide attempts, and other types of self harm) are submitted via a secure web-based DoDSER application.

How can this be?

According to a new report by USA Today,

War was the leading cause of death in the military nearly every year between 2004 and 2011 until suicides became the top means of dying for troops in 2012 and 2013, according to a bar chart published this week in a monthly Pentagon medical statistical analysis journal.

For those last two years, suicide outranked war, cancer, heart disease, homicide, transportation accidents and other causes as the leading killer, accounting for about three in 10 military deaths each of those two years.

The Pentagon’s montly medical statistical analysis journal states,

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said military suicides were becoming an epidemic and told USA Today,

“I want to make sure that we, particularly in the Department of Defense and the military establishment, are aware of how tragic this problem is and how urgent it is for us to try and address it. This is a frustrating challenge. And there aren’t any easy answers or quick fixes. But we are a family in the military. We have to take care of our family members, we’re talking about men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line to protect this country, and I think we have to do everything possible, to try to make sure we protect them.”

According to Pentagon data, 6800 military members have been killed in Iraq and Afganistan since the events of 9/11. More than 3000 more have taken their own lives in that same time-frame.

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