Unusually high number of suicides and psychological evacuations among US troops in Iraq invasion:
“Twenty-five soldiers have taken their lives during the past year in the Iraq war. In addition, there have been seven suicides among newly State-sided troops, including two soldiers who killed themselves while patients at Walter Reed Army Hospital, the Toronto Star recently reported.
The suicide rate for army troops in Iraq has been 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers, compared to the overall Army rate of 11.9 per 100,000 between 1995 and 2002. According to StrategyPage.com, this rate is higher than the rate for all branches of the military during the Vietnam War, which was 15.6, and higher than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which had a 3.6 rate for all branches.” — Bill Berkowitz, (Guerrilla News Network)
Compared to prior wars, Iraq is being manned by a higher proportion of older married GIs and reservists. There has been reduced pre-deployment mental health screening and, in some cases, the inappropriate mobilization of soldiers with preexisting mental health problems. Rumsfeld’s recent decision to extend the tours of units in Iraq, the general sense among the troops that the administration is ‘shorting’ them on resources and support, the feeling of having been lied to about the rationale for the action, the prospect of urban guerrilla warfare as well as being mired down and on the defensive are likely to exacerbate the problem. One can only wonder at the impact of the Abu Ghraib scandal in which any number of their colleagues so thoroughly dishonored themselves and the military edifice in general.
The military response is to use combat stress control teams and front-line recuperation centers to shore up GIs suffering psychological symptoms. It is clear to me as a mental health practitioner how inadequate this approach is on several grounds. First, it relies on the dubious assumption that the suicides are related to ‘combat stress’ (PTSD) syndromes and the discredited notion that early intervention can abort the progression of the syndrome. Furthermore, soldiers who come forward to seek services often suffer the consequences; this will discourage adequate evaluation and stabilization. For this reason, the actual incidence of psychiatric distress among the troops is surely being underestimated.
Given recent revelations of the shameful neglect of the medical needs of the wounded GIs returning stateside, it is no surprise that the psychological casualties are treated no less shabbily. Rumsfeld and his cronies are dramatically gutting the Veterans’ Administration’s ability to meet the treatment needs of military veterans. And given the likely failure of the Iraqi adventure, we can expect a host of reintegration problems among returning veterans on even a greater scale than the infamous abandonment of the Vietnam veterans once they returned from their tours of duty.
