According to this cite:
107 US soldiers have died of self inflicted wounds in Iraq.
Does anyone know if, and by how much, this is outside of the statistical norm for the number of soldiers that have done a tour there and their demographic profile? It seems like a lot to me but maybe it is within the realm of what would be expected.
According to WHO (link here) suicide rates in the US are approximately 17.6 per 100,000 per year (those are 1999 numbers, pre-dating the war). According to (this site), we’ve averaged around 120,000 troops in Iraq for the last five years. Both of those were just the first reasonable google searches, so they may be biased one way or the other, but those numbers seem reasonable.
So, 5 years * 120,000 = 600,000 troop years in Iraq. At 17.6 suicides per 100,000, that’s an expected value of 105.6 suicides–astoundingly close to the actual number.
Now, you asked about demographics, and there I don’t know. It’s going to get complicated, since any stats you can find for US soldiers suicide rates are likely to be derived from the same number you’re trying to check, unless you go with older wars which may be different in other important ways.
I’m not sure you can assume that “self inflicted” equates suicide. Could be a mixture of accident, suicide and possibly intent to get out of Iraq that went wrong. Maybe even foul play that went undetected.
I don’t have the cite at present, but I will find it before the end of the day. The rates of suicides in Iraq are about equal to the number of suicides for people of the same age and gender for people of the same demographic group overall. That is that young men will attempt suicide at about the same rate whether he is a soldier in Iraq, or a cashier at the movie theater in Boise, Idaho.
Sgt Schwartz
Guess it depends on the defination of a self inflicted wound? ie. does an Negligent Discharge class as a self inflicted wound?
Well in peacetime, the leading cause of death amongst active-duty soldiers is drowning. Number two is suicide. In many ways this makes sense. Darn few soldiers have chronic diseases. This would raise violent deaths as a percentage.
Wartime raises the suicide rate, if for no other reason than lethal means are more readily at hand. One thing about high explosives is they reduced the rate of attempted self-slaughter.
Then of course there are the horrible stresses of wartime. I would suspect that the suicide rate amongst peacetime soldier is lower than the national average. Wartime brings it up to a level quite near the norm.
Does it for civilians? Are suicides tallied as such only if there is a “dear world” note?
That the suicide rate for the army is the same as for civilians is not much consolation. I would expect my protectors to be much more attached to their lives than regular mall rats. What are the suicide stats for police officers or firefighters?
In answer to the first question, i really dont know, i guess it would be classed as an accidental deat in civvy street. There is a chance Military collecion of statisics is very different.
As for expecting your protectors to be more attached to their lives, speaking as a very recent former soldier i can only repeat what i was told by my instructors, peers…in fact pretty much everyone in the military. And that was that the more time i spend worrying about my life, the less combat effective i am and the more danger i am placing my team in.
Im not saying a soldier is not scared to lose his life im just saying they normaly accept the danger to it etc etc more.
In 2004, The Washington Post did an extensive investigative report on suicides by American soldiers in Iraq. This began in response to the DOD’s claim that the number of suicides was within the range of variation. The Post reporters concluded that the rate was actually 20 percent higher than expected, a figure which the Army later agreed was accurate.
The Post reporters criticized the military’s poor treatment of post traumatic stress disorder as one cause of the problem, but also assailed their misuse of antidepressants, concluding that this was perhaps a bigger cause.
I believe the Post reporters wrote a book on the subject, but I can’t recall theier names so I can’t find either their stories or a reference to the book. Maybe somebody else knows the series I’m remembering?
Do you want your “protectors” (EMTs, paramedics, firefighters, police officers, soldiers et al.) to be human? People commit suicide, no one is immune. Sure, pre-employment screening at the Police Department and the military is significant enough that the profoundly mentally ill will almost always be filtered out–but not every one who commits suicide gives signs that are significant enough to be detected, and, not everyone who signed up with a clean mental bill of health is guaranteed to never become suicidal.
It’s hard to know the motivation behind a self-inflicted wound. There are cases dating back to at least World War II in which soldiers would self-inflict minor wounds in order to get shipped back home. One American General (I want to say Patton, but am not sure) IIRC had all cases of “accidental self-wounding” thoroughly investigated because of this.
I would not be surprised if the suicide rate is higher for people in a combat zone, in fact I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case. Extreme emotional and mental stress can cause some people to break. Although in my experience PTSD tends to lead to suicide most commonly several years after the soldier is removed from the conflict, that’s just my personal experience and not statistical knowledge.
On top of that, people do stupid things. You can self-inflict a grenade wound or a shooting on yourself and it not be intentional. You can also shoot yourself in the leg with the intention of being sent home and hit a major artery like the femoral and bleed out, there’s not really a good, safe way to self-inflict a wound that will get you sent home without putting your life at risk.
Anecdotal evidence from friends, some in police work, and one in the coroners office, says that this still happens. Cases that seem very likely to the police or coroner to be suicides are allowed to be reported as ‘accidental’, to spare the feelings of the family. (But they do go thru a pretty thorough investigation for possible homicide, especially if the family is pushing on this.) The coroner will sometimes put “unexplained” in the summary line, but reading the details of the report make it clear that it was a suicide.
Apparently this is most common in small, rural towns. Which is odd, actually, since generally everybody in town knows what really* happened.
They probably are. However, they have compensatingly more stressful lives and far greater chances for psychological trauma, too. Of my three Norwegian friends who went to Afghanistan, none of them will talk about what they have seen and one of them attempted suicide in the start of 2006.
not to forget the ready access to lethal weapons in the forces. Darn, I would know how to kill myself even if I wanted to as there aint no guns around here