Increase Linked to Long Wars, Lack of Army Resources

Gallery
Beyond Walter Reed
Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside was judged by her superiors to be a model officer. But after suffering a psychiatric breakdown in Iraq, she has found herself facing criminal charges for attempted suicide and endangering the life of another soldier. Her story shows that the Army continues to grapple with soldiers who suffer mental trauma in a combat zone.

Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who was waiting for the Army to decide whether to court-martial her for endangering another soldier and turning a gun on herself last year in Iraq, attempted to kill herself Monday evening. In so doing, the 25-year-old Army reservist joined a record number of soldiers who have committed or tried to commit suicide after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I'm very disappointed with the Army," Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. "Hopefully this will help other soldiers." She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned yesterday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

Whiteside's personal tragedy is part of an alarming phenomenon in the Army's ranks: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments. Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 -- the lowest rate on record -- the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006.



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That's so sad...


I guess when you try to de-sensitize a human it just causes more problems in the long run. People aren't meant to be robots programmed to kill. We thrive off of good emotions such as love.. you know?



But I do look forward to the war ending already. I think it's dragged on far too long...

this is sad i have a few friends out in Iraq . . . .

This is bad people real bad this whole mess is bad for the economy the families everybody suffers when wars are made except the Corporations and Mercenary agencies are reallythe ones that make money.Do you people know that about 166 billion dollars ave been spent to date and there's been a considerable amount of corruption in the reconstruction phase people like John bloom have stolen a few million dollars by "providing" jobs and bribing high ranking military officers so they can turn the other way.Im not surprised that their been sucides.Killing as a proffesion can take a toll on a clean mind we as humans arent really built to shoot five year olds carrying a live grenade. I think that we must spent tax dollars wisely in this war (for once) and not offer but make it a standard to check every soldier mentally during after and before they engage in combat. :-)