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February 5, 2009 - Army official: Suicides in January 2009 are 'terrifying'
- Two
dozen soldiers believed to have killed themselves in January,
official says
- The
number of likely suicides more than those killed in combat last
month
- Army
psychologist says long, cold months of winter might have
contributed to spike
- Army takes rare step of releasing figures for month rather than waiting till end of year
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One week after the U.S. Army announced record suicide rates among its soldiers last year, the service is worried about a spike in possible suicides in the new year.
If reports of suicides are confirmed, more soldiers will have taken their lives in January than died in combat.
If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January.
Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard, said that the long, cold months of winter could be a major contributor to the January spike.
"There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold," she said.
But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers.
Those who are seeking mental-health care often have their treatment disrupted by deployments. Deployed soldiers also have to deal with the stress of separations from families.
"When people are apart you have infidelity, financial problems, substance abuse and child behavioral problems," Platoni said. "The more deployments, the more it is exacerbated."
Platoni also said that while the military has made a lot of headway in training leaders on how to deal with soldiers who may be suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, "there is still a huge problem with leadership who shame them when they seek treatment."
The anti-depressants prescribed to soldiers can have side effects that include suicidal thoughts. Those side effects reportedly are more common in people 18 to 24.
Concern about last month's suicide rate was so high, Congress and the Army leadership were briefed. In addition, the Army took the rare step of releasing data for the month rather than waiting to issue it as part of annual statistics at the end of the year.
In January 2008, the Army recorded two confirmed cases of suicides and two other cases it was investigating.
Last week, in releasing the report that showed a record number of suicides in 2008, the Army said it soon will conduct servicewide training to help identify soldiers at risk of suicide.
The program, which will run February 15 through March 15, will include training to recognize behaviors that may lead to suicide and instruction on how to intervene. The Army will follow the training with another teaching program, from March 15 to June 15, focused on suicide prevention at all unit levels.
The 2008 numbers were the highest annual level of suicides among soldiers since the Pentagon began tracking the rate 28 years ago. The Army said 128 soldiers were confirmed to have committed suicide in 2008, and an additional 15 were suspected of having killed themselves. The statistics cover active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves.
The Army's confirmed rate of suicides in 2008 was 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers. The nation's suicide rate was 19.5 per 100,000 people in 2005, the most recent figure available, Army officials said last month.
Suicides for Marines were also up in 2008. There were 41 in 2008, up from 33 in 2007 and 25 in 2006, according to a Marines report.
In addition to the new training, the service has a program called Battlemind, intended to prepare soldiers and their families to cope with the stresses of war before, during and after deployment. It also is intended to help detect mental-health issues before and after deployments.
The Army and the National Institute of Mental Health signed an agreement in October to conduct research to identify factors affecting the mental and behavioral health of soldiers and to share strategies to lower the suicide rate. The five-year study will examine active-duty, National Guard and reserve soldiers and their families.
Five soldiers in the Houston Recruiting Battalion have committed suicide since 2001.
During the same time, 17 recruiters nationwide have taken their own lives.
Army Recruiter Suicides Prompt Investigations
by John McChesneyBack in March of 2007, Aron Andersson locked himself in the cab of his Ford 150 pickup, called home to say he was going to kill himself, shot up the dashboard radio, and then put a bullet in his head. He had threatened suicide five months earlier, and back then his father, Bob Andersson, reported him to the military.
"I don't know if that was the right thing to do, but I called a major and told him his girlfriend had said he threatened to commit suicide, and she told me he was going through night terrors and a bunch of other things. And he'd get up to go to work in the morning and tell his girlfriend he was exhausted, and she'd say, 'Yeah you've been jumpin' over the couch, hidin' behind the chairs and stuff, like you're in battle,' and he wouldn't even realize it in the morning," Andersson says.
Aron Andersson served two tours in Iraq, and he was furious with his father for reporting him, saying his Army career would be ended.
"And I just simply told him, 'Well, Aron, if you don't talk to me ever again, I can live with that. But if I didn't turn you in and something happened, I don't think I could live with that,' " Bob Andersson says.
Andersson says his son had trouble delivering the required two recruits a month, especially after his experience in Iraq.
Intense Pressure On Recruiters
Chris Rodriguez, a friend who worked with Aron Andersson as a recruiter, says no one wanted to lie, but pressure on recruiters is intense during wartime. Recruiting is considered one of the most stressful jobs in the military.
Aron Andersson was diagnosed with PTSD and depression, prescribed medication, and returned to recruiting duty. His unit was advised to keep an eye on him, and six months later, he took his life.
On Aug. 9, Staff Sgt. Larry Flores, an Iraq veteran, hanged himself in his garage with an extension cord. Fellow recruiters told the Houston Chronicle that a week earlier, Flores had been yelled at and threatened with firing for failing to meet the goal of two recruits each month. He was also having trouble with his wife.
Two weeks later, Sgt. First Class Patrick Henderson, also an Iraq veteran in the same recruiting company with Flores, hanged himself in the garage behind his home. Like Aron Andersson, Henderson had earlier called his wife, Amanda, from his pickup, saying he was going to kill himself.
"Crazed, hysterical — he was crying and screaming, and I kept asking him what's wrong, and he said 'I just can't deal with it anymore,' " Amanda Henderson says. "He said, 'I've got the shotgun.' "
Amanda Henderson and a friend talked Patrick down that time. She says the next morning, he was delusional and imagined he was back in Iraq. He was sent off to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio for evaluation, then returned to his outfit but relieved from recruiting duty. Amanda Henderson, herself a recruiter in the same battalion, says she remained terrified.
"He kept telling me, no, he's not going to do it, no he's not going to do it," she says. "And he tried to convince me, but I knew in the back of my head deep down that if you were going to try it once, you were definitely going to do it again. So I knew something was wrong."
There's been a fourth suicide in the Houston battalion during this same time period involving another combat veteran. No other details are available. The Army says a fifth reported suicide in Houston was not a recruiter.
Investigation Under Way
At the Houston battalion's headquarters, there is an investigation under way and no one was available for comment, but the U.S. Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky said a general has been appointed to look into the matter. Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn called for the investigation.
"I asked for an independent investigation," Cornyn says. "This is not what I call an independent investigation, but it's a step in the right direction. And my hope is after this command investigation, I hope we'll hold hearings."
One of the questions the senator wants answered is whether it is wise to order combat veterans to take recruiting jobs. Most of them don't volunteer.
James Larsen, a retired senior policy analyst for the Army Recruiting Command, says a recent study commissioned by the Army looked at the level of stress hormones in recruiters.
Whether or not recruiters have the highest stress level, there's little doubt they are under extraordinary pressure to sell the Army to a small number of reluctant consumers. Add to that the marital stress brought on by 12- to 14-hour workdays, the isolation of being stationed in small towns far from a base — and in the Houston battalion's case, alleged abusive treatment of those who didn't produce their quota — and you have a potentially toxic cocktail.
But Cornyn is concerned about another matter.
"Part of this that was troubling was the suggestion that there was pressure being put down the chain of command to keep this quiet," he says.
Cornyn wants to know if the Houston battalion's problems are an isolated case, or whether recruiter stress patterns are similar in other places. Amanda Henderson believes the problems are widespread and that the Houston battalion in particular ignored all the danger signals.
"It needed to be looked at whenever the first one taken his life," she says. "Not wait until the fifth one had taken his life. The fifth one was my husband."
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