Army alarmed by suicides rates of soldiers.

The U.S. military is losing a battle to stem an epidemic of suicides in its ranks, according to an article in PsychPORT.

The Department of Defense reported last week that there were 160 active-duty suicides in 2009, compared with 140 in 2008. This report only covered soldiers who were actively serving, and did not include the large numbers of soldiers who return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and commit suicide in the months and years afterward, when they often suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome and have problems readjusting to civilian life.

“There’s no question that 2009 was a painful year for the army when it comes to suicides,” said Col. Christopher Philbrick, the Deputy Director of the Army Suicide Prevention Taskforce, despite “wide-ranging measures last year to combat the problem.”

Col. Elspeth Richie, the Director of Behavioral Health for the Office of the Army Surgeon General, is alarmed by the easy availability of handguns on army bases and the ongoing stigma attached to suicide, mental illness, and the treatment of mental illness, despite the army’s attempt to change. Elspeth says, “In many ways we talk out of both sides of our mouths.”

There have been a number of conferences, taskforces, training programs and studies devoted to the problem of suicide, yet the problem gets worse. Soldiers who receive counseling are still committing suicide. “Many soldiers think that seeking treatment could ruin their army careers,” Elspeth notes.

Suicide among solders is not new. During the Viet Nam War of the 1960s and 1970s, almost as many soldiers committed suicide during and after the war as were killed in combat—about 60,000. The alarming rate of suicides associated with this war has been attributed to the unpopularity of the war.

This statistic has been largely hidden, as the army views suicides as shameful. It is a problem the army wishes would just go away. And the counseling they have devised to work with soldiers who have a suicidal tendency is geared to making them stop being a problem for the army as soon as possible. Nothing will make a suicidal person commit suicide faster than someone giving him the message he is being a nuisance.

The army’s attitude, however, is no different than the attitude of society in general. Suicide has historically been stigmatized. And mental illness has historically been stigmatized as well. Like the army, society is not particularly interested in understanding why people are suicidal. Society simply wants to put suicidal people on some kind of medication or some kind of quick fix program and get them out of their irksome funk as quickly as possible.

What I’ve learned about suicides during my 30 years of practice with suicidal people is that the all of them suffer from some kind of mental anguish, and the most effective way of helping them is to provide them with an empathic listener who will give them the space the talk through and unravel the conflicts inside of them.

Listening is not something the army—or most people—do well.