military suicide down: yes, but

The most recent stats out of the Pentagon indicate that suicide among the active-duty military went down a significant percentage since last year (somewhere around 15%, depending on which numbers you use), but increased among reservists and the National Guard, so that now they outnumber active-duty suicides.  The Army, in particular, believes the measures it has instituted to counter suicidal tendencies have helped, and fingers crossed that that's true, but the kicker for me came toward the end of the AP article:

"According to Army data, more than half of the reservists who committed suicide in 2012 and 2013 had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials, however, have not been able to establish a strong link between military service on the warfront and suicide."

Ok, yes, we like "strong links" as evidence; they're more reliable than anecdotes, and there is that other substantial group who hadn't deployed before they killed themselves.  Also, I'm increasingly wary of confirmation bias -- the tendency to believe evidence that proves what you already believe.  But might  the premises behind the research make it hard to figure out what's really going on?  Can it really be that being trained to kill reflexively has no repercussions?  Or that being a part, even at a distance, of a mechanism that engages in such senseless, futile, soul-sucking belligerencies doesn't take a toll?

It has always seemed obvious to me that the best way to prevent suicide, PTSD and other psychic distress is not to send heavily-armed people into such untenable situations in the first place.  Ah, yes, but then we'd have to reckon with what we've been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Africa and god knows where else in the first place -- and we don't seem to have any encouraging statistics for that.

suicide ain't painless

So the prez will now send condolence letters to families of service members who commit suicide in combat zones, tho not elsewhere or later, which is where and when many deployment-related suicides happen.  Good.  Now, let's see, what else could he do to improve the situation? Like maybe end the misbegotten wars and remove that cause of moral injury?

Mass. family at center of suit: Class action alleges Prudential unfairly profited from death benefits

By Nan Levinson, Globe Correspondent  |  October 4, 2010

Kevin Lucey was at the wake for his son, Jeffrey, a Marine who had committed suicide at their Belchertown home in the summer of 2004, when military officers presented him with a stack of forms to sign.

“I never read them. I just signed,’’ he said. “I wanted to get back to Jeff.’’

Three weeks later, Lucey received a kit from Prudential Insurance, which provides life insurance benefits to veterans on behalf of the federal government. He had the option of receiving the $250,000 payment in a lump sum or 36 monthly installments. Like most people, Lucey opted for the lump sum, and Prudential explained it had set up an “Alliance Account’’ in his name.

Still reeling from Jeffrey’s death, he asked his wife, Joyce, what she wanted to do about the money.

“I didn’t want to hear it,’’ she recalled. “I said it was blood money.’’

They stashed the kit in a drawer.

Several months later, on the advice of a colleague, Kevin Lucey decided to withdraw the money and invest it more profit ably elsewhere. The paperwork had included what looked like a bank checkbook, so he wrote a draft for the balance. Prudential took nearly a month to send the money, he said.

Only much later did he learn that Prudential had never deposited any money in his account, instead investing it as part of its general account and passing on only a small portion of the interest earned, he said.