Military suicide prevention efforts fail: report & related items from a military health Web site

Excerpts from a Reuters news item

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Efforts to prevent suicides among U.S. war veterans are failing, in part because distressed troops do not trust the military to help them, top military officials said on Thursday.

Poor training, a lack of coördination and an overstretched military are also factors, but a new 76-point plan lays out ways to improve this, Colonel John Bradley, chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, told a conference.

Each branch of the services — the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines — rushed to create a suicide prevention program, but there was no coördination. The report recommends that the defense secretary’s office take over coördination of suicide prevention efforts.

On-the-ground prevention training often failed because those running the sessions did not understand their importance, Bradley said.

“They are mocked and they are probably harmful,” he said.

According to the report, available at http://www.health.mil/dhb/default.cfm, 1,100 servicemen and women committed suicide in 2005 to 2009 — one suicide every day and a half. The Army’s suicide rate doubled in that time.

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Librarian Karen Estrada publishes Milhealth’s Directory of Military Health Information
Her recent postings on military suicides

**Complex Puzzle of Military Suicides: Is it Really? (a personal observation)

**Shoulder to Shoulder: I Will Never Quit on Life posting at the site’s home page

SOURCES

http://www.army.mil Army releases new video to combat suicides. 17 July 2010. By Alexandra Hemmerly-Brown. Available at:    http://www.army.mil/-news/2010/07/17/42436-army-releases-new-video-to-combat-suicides/?ref=news-home-title0 [Accessed 19JUL2010].

http://www.army.mil. Shoulder to Shoulder: DA civilian training. July 15, 2010. Available at: http://www.army.mil/media/amp/?bctid=115348558001 [Accessed 19 July 2010].

National Institutes of Health. MedlinePlus, the Magazine. Winter 2010. Preventing Suicides in the Military. pp 5-6. Available at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/pdf/MLP_Winter_2010.pdf [Accessed 19 July 2010].

Related News Items

Improved behavioral health needed to respond to rising number of suicides among US Armed Forces

February 17, 2011 12:00:00 AM EST

(RAND Corporation) Suicide rates in the US military have increased sharply since 2001 as the nation fights two wars. A new study sponsored by the Department of Defense finds that military officials should improve efforts to identify those at-risk and improve both the quality and access to behavioral health treatment to combat the problem. Needed changes include promoting the advantages of using behavioral health care and assuring that service members can receive help confidentially.