Not since Vietnam have results of warfare left behind so many demons. Perhaps, the reality of fighting on the ground – seeing horror unfold first hand, instead of strategically and "antiseptically" from the air – results in a reality very hard to bear. Before this day is done, dozens of military personal will contemplate ending their lives; according to statistics (CBS) about eighteen will succeed. Despite modern society’s stigma toward suicide, these hundreds of dead may rank among the most conscientious of military men. Many felt unable to live with a secret weight they held, because their conscience would not allow it. In a metaphorical sense, the mind and body died, while the soul survived the nightmare of war.
Suicide and Mental Health
According to Harvard Medical School ninety percent of people who commit suicide have psychiatric disorders at the time of their death. Does this mean war can drive normal people to the brink of insanity?
The Department of Veterans Affairs admits VA hospitals treated over 210,000 veterans for mental and behavioral problems (others may have been treated elsewhere) and 454, 598 veterans have service connected disabilities due to a mental illness (http://www.namiscc.org/newsletters/Sept01/veteran.htm). Already, the military has flooded millions of dollars into suicide prevention programs for soldiers suffering depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
“This is the tip of the iceberg,” says Tod Ensign, director of GI rights group Citizen Soldier, calling the problem a national calamity.
No one knows how many came back with devastating trauma or mental illness, but the math suggests they're here in hundreds of thousands.
Reasons for Suicide – Personal Stories
Andrew Mills of The Star-Ledger (NJ.com) tells about James Jenkins, 23, who killed himself in 2005, after service in Iraq. Disturbed by brutal nightmares, he often refused to sleep. His mother noticed he seemed hyper-alert, although at other times was unresponsive and lost in thought. She told the reporter her son had flashbacks terrifying to behold. He cried like a child, she said, and in a tormented voice confessed he couldn’t escape the faces of those he’d shot in Iraq. He said, “Mom, I killed 212 people, and some of them didn’t deserve to die." He felt like he deserved punishment for it and also watched friends die in battle. Three other friends, Marines as himself, also committed suicide and he grew more alone. "His eyes," she said. "They looked real far away. That’s how I knew he wasn’t really here. He was still in Iraq."
Coleman Bean fatally shot himself, in 2008, after serving in Iraq. The Star-Ledger reports of his nightmares, insomnia, rage, and attempts to self-medicate these symptoms with alcohol. Coleman said terrifying panic attacks made him feel he couldn’t breathe, paralyzed his limbs, and turned his vision black. After coming home from duty he seemed like a different person.
He’d seen women and children reduced to charred husks in a burning bus. He’d shot up a car as it charged a military checkpoint, finding afterward that he and his squad had killed not a suicide bomber but a child. *(1)
"The things he saw in Iraq ate at him," said his father, as published in The Star-Ledger.
A friend said they became numb to everything and even laughed about body parts they collected after bombings or people they shot. Jacob Swanson, another soldier among Coleman’s friends (who served in Afghanistan) began referring to people as ‘It.’ Swanson later shot himself after killing his girlfriend in California.
"I saw things today that I think will mess me up for life," Army Spc. Trevor Hogue, 24, wrote his mother from Baghdad in 2007. Science Daily (6/12/2009) reports Trevor drove a Jeep after his discharge and attached an empty grenade to its gear shift. He complained his medications made him feel numb, but better than he was feeling before. Before he killed himself Hogue wrote inside his journal, "Please know that I am happy, finally."
Huffington Post (4/ 24/2009) reports Alyssa Peterson felt forced to interrogate Iraqi prisoners in what was called the cage. Appalled how the Iraqis were being treated, she refused to follow orders, killing herself in 2003.
In Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans (regarding a CBS News Investigation), Armen Keteyian writes about Timothy Bowman, 23, an army reservist who killed himself on Thanksgiving Day.
"His eyes when he came back were just dead. The light wasn't there anymore," Tim’s mother said, noting "Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total."
Tim was tormented by things he was ordered to do while serving. Later, his mother said, "The ghosts and demons of what they had been asked to do would not leave him alone. He suffered from PTSD and depression and we never even saw it."
Misleading Military Suicide Statistics
Keteyian reports CBS submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense for data of all military suicides for the previous twelve years. CBS finally received a document revealing 2,200 suicides (between 1995 and 2007). But the document only included active duty soldiers.
CBS next asked each state for statistics on veterans since 1995. Forty-five states complied with a stunning revelation. In those states at least 6,256 suicides had occurred in the Armed Forces. That’s 120 suicides a week, or – put another way - about 18 suicides a day. The army’s figures were dramatic, but suicides have increased in all of the military services since both these wars (though it’s harder to track veterans once they leave active duty).
“If you're just looking at the overall number of veterans themselves who've committed suicide, we have not been able to get the numbers,” Senator Patty Murray (WA) said to CBS News.
This historical rise in military suicide rates is now unprecedented as it climbs onward into 2010. CBS reports suicide in the military now greatly exceeds rates in the general population.
Suicide is not always tallied into U.S. casualties, so real losses become unclear. The Department of Defense records 4,378 American troops killed in Afghanistan/Iraq, but these figures rapidly change once suicides are included. The U.S. death toll then reaches over ten thousand.
*(1) Military suicides: Army Sgt. Coleman Bean's Downward Spiral Ends with Gunfire, by Star-Ledger Staff
Links to similar articles by this writer:
War and Ecology
U.S. Domestic Problems vs. War
Morality Before War
Making War Obsolete
Tragedy of Iraq
Children as Casualties of War
The Hidden Cost of War in Afghanistan
Highway of Death
Paula Marie Deubel - Published author/writer/journalist/poet I've always written under the pen name "P. Mari," an abbreviation of my full name. I have ...
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