The Inquisitr » U.S. Army

US Army Suicide Rate Hits Record Despite New Mental Fitness Program

AHN — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:25:33 +0000

Washington, D.C. (AHN) – Suicides in the Army are set to hit a record, having reached the same number as last year. But military officials believe the statistic belies the progress being made in addressing what they say has been a historical deficit in how mental health problems are prevented and treated.

According to Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli, 140 active-duty soldiers and 71 soldiers not on active duty killed themselves this year. The active-duty suicides are equivalent to the total in 2008, while the number on non-active duty soldiers are higher by 14.

“Obviously we would prefer not to have another suicide this year or in the years that follow. But we know that will not be the case,” Chiarelli said in a press conference. “We talk about these incidents of suicide using figures and percentages. However the grim reality is, each case represents an individual, a person with family and friends and a future ahead of him or her… it is not a single problem with a defined set of symptoms or markers.”

“Over the past eight months, every suicide has been briefed to me,” he added. “And although we have made changes to Army policy based on many of the lessons learned, we still haven’t found any statistically significant causal linkage that would allow us to effectively predict human behavior.”

Chiarelli said suicides rose at Fort Campbell, and fell in Fort Hood, a post where troops prepare for and return from deployment and known for its abnormally high suicide rate. In addition, most of the suicides at Fort Campbell were by soldiers who never deployed.

Defense officials have been taking aggressive steps to address mental health issues of troops amid debate in Washington about whether to send more troops in the Afghan war, which is on its eighth year.

Roughly $3.3 billion is allocated in the 2010 defense budget for caring for injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. The Defense and Veterans Affairs departments last month also held its first ever mental health summit.

“It is important to put these numbers in context and to talk about why we believe, despite these numbers, that we are making some progress,” Chiarelli said in his press conference. “Since March, the general trendline, with the exception of a couple of months, has been down. And we attribute this reduction in the number of suicides to the many actions we have taken, since February, to inform and educate leaders and soldiers on this important issue.”

The Army is working to end the stigma associated with seeking and receiving help for mental health, and has a new Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program that trains troops to be psychologically resilient.

It also has developed a new questionnaire for Military Entrance Processing stations, and for the first time gave a full battalion of returning soldiers mental health evaluations.

“We had a portion of that population, of that battalion, do face-to-face. And we had a portion of that population do it online,” Chairelli explained. “The key here is to be able to supplement our behavior health care providers for the return of a battalion. We want to increase this to a brigade and provide everybody, early on in the process, that evaluation and to come back at the 90-180-day mark and do it again, to identify those individuals who may be having trouble with reintegration.”

The Army is sorely in need of healthcare providers to continue its efforts. It has a shortage of about 300 substance abuse counselors and 800 mental healthcare providers.

Some active-duty soldiers members of white supremacist social network

Steven Hodson — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:29:35 +0000

There is no doubt that in a military force of the size of the US Army there are bound to be a few borderline crackpots. However I think that the idea that a fair number of them are also members of white supremacist social networking services should be just a tad discomforting.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a Alabama base watchdog service that tracks hate groups has compiled a book that contains the online profiles of at least 40 newsaxon.org users who proudly display that they are members of the US Armed Forces. On Friday the SPLC will be presenting its finding to the key members of congress who chair the House and Senate committees overseeing the armed forces. At that point they well be urging the Pentagon to crack down on these affiliations.

“In the wake of several high-profile murders by extremists of the radical right, we urge your committees to investigate the threat posed by racial extremists who may be serving in the military to ensure that our armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists,” Morris Dees, SPLC co-founder and chief trial counsel, wrote to the legislators. “Evidence continues to mount that current Pentagon policies are inadequate to prevent racial extremists from joining and serving in the armed forces.”

Source: Stars & Stripes – Watchdog group: Dozens of active-duty troops found on neo-Nazi site.

Mark Potock the editor of the report isn’t expecting much of a reaction from the Pentagon given past experiences where the Pentagon has basically shrugged it off and refused to look into the matter in any serious fashon.

On the newsaxon.org website, which Potok termed “a racist version of Facebook run by the National Socialist Movement,” many participants list their branch of service, base location and hometown on colorful pages festooned with Nazi art and Confederate battle flags. Some say they have served or will soon be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Several include pictures of themselves in camouflage combat uniforms.

One participant under the username “WhitePride85,” who said he is a 24-year-old staff sergeant from Madison, Wis., wrote: “I have been in the Army for over 5 years now … I am a SSGT … I have been in Iraq and Kuwait … I love and will do anything to keep our master race marching. I have been a skinhead forever.”

Source: Stars & Stripes – Watchdog group: Dozens of active-duty troops found on neo-Nazi site.

If this kind of thing is prevalent in the arm forces it makes one wonder just how may deaths in places like Iraq and Afghanistan were honest mistakes or the result of supremacist hatred.

US Army Recruiting Suicidal Teens?

Duncan Riley — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:54:05 +0000

Look at the sign this way: the other side are, so why shouldn’t the US Army recruit suicidal teens as well? Not sure if it’s shopped or not, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that it could be real.

U.S. Army to setup camp on Second Life

Steven Hodson — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:45:56 +0000

It would seem that not only is the U.S. Army going into the gaming business but they are also taking a serious look at Second Life. Over the next 30 to 45 days Second Lifers will see two new island appear in their world says General William S. Wallace; commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).

The first island with the starting point point for anyone wanting to check out the Army scene on Second life is their welcome center. This is where you will find an information kiosk and the means to contact an Army recruiter. The second island will provide; in the words of Gen. Wallace

“virtual experiences like jumping out of airplanes, and rappelling off of towers and using a weapon, to see if we can get some kind of recruiting benefit out of this social networking.”

What I find really facinating about these types of things involving the Army is that they seem to get what all this social mdia and technology is about better than most of the people trying to market it to businesses. They understand that social media isn’t about just setting up shop somewhere and controlling what happens. The Army understands that it is about going to where the people they want to talk with are and then creating a valid reason for a conversation to begin.

For the Army it isn’t a matter of finding a way to make money off of social media interaction. They are looking at purely from an outreach and conversation point of view. This doesn’t mean that they are seeing it as some pie in the sky either but instead are being quite realistic about its potential

Wallace says he’s a realist when it comes to social networking technologies. He admits they’ve probably been “oversold,” but won’t write them off either. The recruiting possibilities are just too alluring. He notes, ” there’s about 4 million young people that routinely interface in Second Life. [That's] the age group of the young people who we’re trying to encourage to join the military.”

Mabye all these hot to trot social media experts and marketer should keep a closer eye on what the Army is doing. They might learn a thing or two.