High Suicide Risk For Young Veterans

[sabra]

Source: eCanadaNow

Washington (eCanadaNow) - A new study has found that young U.S. veterans are at a greater risk of suicide due to them suffering from depression.

The risk of suicide appears to be the highest in the U.S. among young veterans who recently returned from war.

An interesting tidbit to this though was that those young U.S. veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress were less likely to lean towards suicide compared to those who did not have the disease.

Lead researcher Kara Zivin who is a Veterans Administration investigator and an assistant professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor stated that "It's possible that people with PTSD may be receiving additional services, they may have a greater connection to the VA health system - more psychotherapy visits, for example."



Read more: http://www.ecanadanow.com/news/health/high-suicide-risk-for-young-veterans-20071031.html

[rocktivity]

1. Candidate for this month's "You Call This NEWS?" award

They're too depressed to live with either what they did, what they saw, or the realization they sold their souls to a commander-in-chump.

:headbang:
rocknation

[gratuitous]

5. Well, it's news in Canada, apparently

U.S. media outlets will decline to report this, because of their perfectly justified fear of being excoriated by right wing knuckle-draggers as insufficiently supportive of the troops.

Parents, don't raise your babies to enlist in the military.

[peace13]

2. Too sad.

My heart goes out to all vets that have faced duty on the front lines. They may come home but they are never the same. I hope we get some help to these folks. Peace, Kim

[janetle]

3. Grandson of my Mom's next door neighbor--dead

Actually, this rocked the community--Helena, MT. My Mom's next door neighbor's grandson killed himself after returning from Iraq. He had received no help, I guess.

[janetle]

4. Here's the link

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/03/10/news/mtregional/news05.txt

[Acadia Blue]

6. They are so overstretched, underpaid, and not receiving proper

medical and psychological care. I really feel for the guys and gals.

[bonito]

7. K&R

[superconnected]

8. I like how they use the word " Young".

Let's not forget that about our soldiers.

I think the RW would have us forget it.

[cascadiance]

9. This doesn't surprise me... I think suicide and other violence is a ticking time bomb...

As highlighted by the recent movie "In the Valley of Elah", which shows it close up and how lingering it is likely amongst many out there right now...

Consider the following statistics:

1) Ratio of wounded to killed in action for the following wars. Jeremy Scahill mentions these in his talks he gives:

World War II - 1:1
Vietnam - 3:1
First Gulf war - 9:1
Current Iraq War - 17:1

2) Not long ago we've had more Vietnam vets cumulatively to have died via suicide than were actually killed in the war. That's over 58,000 suicides!

3) We're not even factoring in the dead and wounded from the mercenary factions, but that adds another 800+ to the killed in action in this war, and probably countessly more wounded.

When you put these stats together, and figure that those that survive and are wounded are a lot more likely to commit suicide (especially with some of the wounds that people survive with from this war), and that we aren't giving people time to recover before they go back on active duty, you do the math.

I figure one might guestimate conservatively that the ratio of suicides is related to the ratio of the wounded to KIA.

Therefore if there were three times as many wounded in Vietnam as there were suicides (since the killed in action is roughly the same as suicides) then perhaps from the present war one might expect the following equation:

projected #suicides = ( #dead * 17 ) / 3

projected #suicides = (( 3842 + 800 ) * 17) / 3

projected #suicides = about 26305

26,305!

That's almost half of the suicides from Vietnam! This is totally a guess on my part, but I think you can see the rationale for how I'm figuring it, based on the other facts and figures above.