Report Details Low U.S. Army Morale, Suicide in Iraq

Yahoo! News ^ | 3/26/04 | Will Dunham

[LibWhacker]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers in Iraq (news - web sites) were plagued by low morale, experienced spikes in suicides last July and November and lacked access to some medications sought by military mental-health specialists to treat emotional problems, Army experts reported on Thursday.

A 12-person Army Mental Health Advisory Team issued a 38-page report on issues faced by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, including suicide, combat stress and the availability of help from the Army. The team traveled to Iraq from August to October 2003 and interviewed almost 760 soldiers.

The report found a "significant proportion" of soldiers "experienced and reported behavioral health concerns, and that there was an unmet need for behavioral services."

Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. James Peake noted that the report focused on a period when U.S. soldiers faced a mounting insurgency and questions over the length of their deployment.

During a Pentagon (news - web sites) briefing, team members gave fresh details on Army suicides, saying that since last April, 22 male soldiers and two female soldiers had taken their own lives in Iraq and Kuwait. All but one were by gunshot, with the lone exception being an overdose of headache medication.

Three other Army deaths -- two last year and one this year -- are under investigation as possible suicides, officials said. In addition, seven soldiers have committed suicide after returning from Iraq, officials said.

Col. Bruce Crow, a clinical psychologist who served on the team, said suicides peaked with five in July and four in November but averaged about two per month for most of 2003. U.S. troops faced heightened attacks during those two months. He said the only suicide by an Army soldier in Iraq this year occurred this month.

Army officials disclosed some of the suicide findings on Wednesday, including a suicide rate of 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers among soldiers in Iraq, much higher than the overall Army rate.

Crow said this compared to a rate of 15.6 per 100,000 during the Vietnam War and 3.6 during the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).

The report also detailed low morale among Army soldiers, with 72 percent of those questioned characterizing morale as either low or very low in their unit and 52 percent saying their personal morale was either low or very low.

Combat stress was caused by seeing dead bodies, personally coming under attack or knowing someone who was killed or seriously wounded, the report said. Other factors included soldiers' uncertainty over when they would go home.

The report found that soldiers who showed signs of depression, anxiety or traumatic stress were more likely to say it was too difficult to get help from the Army.

About 57 percent of personnel in combat stress-control units and 67 percent in mental health offices attached to Army divisions in Iraq cited insufficient supplies of key medications, including antidepressants and sleep medications.

Psychiatrists in the field said the Army made it "unnecessarily complicated" to fill prescriptions, the report said. Half of these psychiatrists also reported being unhappy with the range of antidepressant medications available for them to provide soldiers.

The Army plans to send another evaluation team to Iraq this spring.

[txzman]

It's a quagmire I tell 'ya.

[pepsionice]

When you take a picture of this situation...and you compare it against Vietnam...you start to see an awful lot of repeats. First, the stress of being there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for one year...adds up. You can't do much except patrol, rest, and wait for someone in your unit to whacked. Second, no matter how much your spouse or kids need you back home...there isn't anything you can do about it. You are stuck because of your loyality and oath. Third, Even if you admit you have stress issues...what can Army medical really do? You sure don't want to hand out extrem med's and have people on patrol who are glossy-eyed (the Vietname comparison here is a joint before every patrol, to keep your stress low). Fourth, death and misery are everywhere...and you are just fighting everyday to stay alive and leave. Face it, Iraq is the armpit of the world, with nimwit Muslims waiting to curse you or kill you.

When this first year group of troopers finally all get home and settled...the divorces will start to fly. The wives who were playing around will be discovered by the husband. The husbands who can't handle stress with the wife or the familiy. The military, unable to comprend stress and help their troops deal with it. Most families are going to put major pressure on their returning members to leave the service. Everyone of these heros...will likely have to make a return tour within 3 years. Not a single one of them want that opportunity. If the Bush adminstration hasn't started wrapping up these deployments by the end of 2005...it will see morale drop in a major way and retention will drop by half.

[Tall_Texan]

I think you have to factor in that a good many soldiers saw the Army as a shortcut to college funding, free training, etc. and convinced themselves they'd never actually be in combat with live ammunition and dead bodies.

While I admire our soldiers for their sacrifices, I do think that there was some mental unpreparedness for what they would face, namely that "winning" the war took only a short time and, having survived that, watching colleagues die protecting the peace is probably harder to accept and absorb.

You steel yourself for combat but what they are seeing now is not so much combat as it is holding their ground amidst a hidden army of terrorists where one never knows if the dark-skinned person you are encountering wants to help you or wants to kill you. I know it would give me nightmares.

[cpdiii]

My son returned from Iraq last week after a year. He is fixing up his new truck, and seeing his friends and making plans for what he will do after he gets out of the Army in two years if he decides to leave the army.

He is a Medic and he did see bad things. He also saw a lot of good things our guys in Iraq did.

[jaykay]

So why not end this nation building crap and use out military for nation busting? Iraq and Afghanistan should have been smouldering ruins and our soldiers safe at home by Christmas 2001.

[McGavin999]

Uh.....I may be all wrong on this, but wouldn't it be a bad idea to give anti-depressant medication to men in a combat zone? I mean, wouldn't it be pretty dangerous to have someone layed back in that situation?

[jaykay]

...saw the Army as a shortcut to college funding, free training, etc.

They saw the Army that way because that's how the Army sells itself. It's about time that we have a military staffed by people who aspire to careers in uniform, not kids who just want to do their time and get on with their lives.

The armed forces should offer a salary comparable to what civilian police officers and firefighters are paid, which would make a lifelong military career a more practical and maybe even attractive option.

And if they can't find enough wastefull spending to cut to pay for pay raises, I'll accept a tax increase to pay for an Army of professional soldiers.

[LibWhacker]

I noticed they didn't mention the background suicide rate among Americans that age: "Among people 20 to 24 years of age, the suicide rate was [in 2000] 12.8 per 100,000 young adults, with seven times as many deaths among men as among women." (From an article found using AskJeeves.)

So the rate is "only" 4.5 suicides more than in the population at large, and this fact makes me wonder about their claim that the rate is "much higher than the overall Army rate." I think it's extraordinarily low considering the circumstances those guys find themselves in.

And when you consider that the rate among white males aged 85 and older is 59 per 100,000, this tells us that we would much, much, much prefer to be in Iraq than be 85 years of age. And I'm not by any means trying to make light of this situation. It's just that, the suicide rate amongst our troops in Iraq is higher than in the population at large, as we would expect, but not that much higher, all things considered. And for that we should be grateful . . . The Army is doing a good job, IMO.

[LibWhacker]

You're not mistaken. I agree with you. I'd be on edge to say the least if I were over there. I know it. But it would be much worse if the guys I were with were all gorked out. I wonder who actually did this study? It sounds like it may have been farmed out to outside consultants, probably a bunch of libs.

[I got the rope]

The army turns men into paranoid, homicidal killers. It took me years before I went out in public without a weapon. To this day I look at people and objects and figure out distance to target. LOL. I was an FO. What the hell do liberals expect. It takes hardcore people to kill someone.

These guys are doing great. I have relatives in the Army and Marine Corp and they think moral is great! Everyone tells me that it's great to be in the military right now.

[Tall_Texan]

Good points and as for "who's behind the study", ask yourself who gets more money if his problem is treated like an epidemic? Why, Army shrinks, that's who? And why does the media pick up on a "study" like this? To further knock down "Bush's war", that's why.

Not really too hard to see that. Wonder what the suicide rates were during WWII? Probably a lot less (even though they faced far worse) because it was not part of the culture to celebrate death as it is today.

[TomB]

This article is pure BS.

Why, if things are so bad, are reenlistments high?

Army divisions hit re-up targets

Army divisions that fought the past 12 months in Iraq have met virtually every re-enlistment goal, a sign that the all-volunteer force remains strong under the stress of frequent deployments and hazardous duty.

The Pentagon has been closely monitoring the re-up rate for five Army divisions that fought in Iraq for about a year. Some officials feared the time away from home and the gritty duty would prompt a large soldier exodus. After all, the war on terrorism is unchartered territory. The 30-year-old volunteer Army has never been this busy in combat.

But numbers compiled this week for the first half of fiscal 2004 show that those five combat units met, or nearly met, all retention targets for enlisted soldiers — the privates, corporals and sergeants who total 416,000 of the Army's 490,000 active force.

"This tends to rebut armchair critics who said the sky is falling and the vultures are circling and the Army is gong to lose all its troops," said Lt. Col. Franklin Childress, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "This is not true. The soldiers get it."

If things were as bad as the article claims, people wouldn't be reenlisting.