Reuters reports that suicides of U.S. Marines have reached their highest level in five years (there have been 32 confirmed or probable suicides among 178,000 Marines this year).
Defense Department spokesman Bryan Driver said there was no evidence linking the higher suicide rate with the long tours of duty and frontline fighting Marines have engaged in Iraq. But a Marine Corps spokesman said on Tuesday that the Defense Department is encouraging Marines to seek mental health services.
I can add nothing to this report that isn't obvious, but I suppose I must: the war in Iraq is taking its toll. Casualties as a result of fighting are a part of war, though horrible; incidences of "friendly fire" that result in fatalities can seem even worse. This - Marines taking their own lives, [perhaps] because of the war - actually, I don't have the words.
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UPDATE
Chaplain Lewis is with the army in Iraq, and his blog has some first-person accounts of what's going on there these days; it's a must-read.
3 comments:
The suicides you report come out to ne 0.0001797% of the population of the Corps. Less than the general population of the US as a whole percentage wise.
Where did the suicides occur? When I was in the Navy (yes it's relavant, I was an RP stationed with NAVY chaplains assigned to USMC units) the highest rates in the Corps were always in Boot Camp, where as the navy rates were while home on leave.
I'd be interested to know where the suicide occured. If it was in Iraq or state side.
One thing not being pointed out is that retention rates for the corps and army are higher than they ever have been.
Even one suicide is a tragety and I will pray for their souls as well as for the families they leave behind.
It breaks my heart.
A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it...It is as if the wounded man's hand is upon the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence, the meaning of ants, potentates, wars, cities, sunshine, snow, a feather dropped from a bird's wing, and the power of it sheds radiance upon a bloody form, and makes the other men understand sometimes that they are little.
Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900, writer and journalist.
"An Episode of War"
I have got a few questions.
1. Do most of these suicides occur once they come home or during deployment
2. Are there any substaintial reports of the former?
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