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Myth 3: The suicidal grunt

Source: The support group Disabled American Veterans published a 1980 pamphlet, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders of the Vietnam Veteran,” stating that the number of all Vietnam veterans who had committed suicide had reached 58,000 – the number of overall U.S. deaths in the war.

That estimate quickly grew. A broadcast of CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Oct. 4, 1986, put the number at more than 100,000. Less than 10 years later, a California chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America projected it to be “approximately 150,000.”

Reality: Exact numbers are unknown. Suicide, with its social stigma, is notoriously difficult to pin down.

The 58,000 figure was based on an assumption that the suicide rate during the initial postwar period had continued unabated. Instead, it dramatically slackened. In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control conducted the most extensive study to date on this issue. It found that the risk of suicide increased with exposure to combat. Still, the CDC concluded that the overall rate for Vietnam-theater veterans is roughly one per 100 veteran deaths. This would bring the current total to about 6,500.

Michael Kelley, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Sacramento, has spent years tracking the wildly varying suicide estimates.

“In the final analysis,” Kelley wrote in a 1999 Washington Post story, “Vietnam veterans likely die from suicide at about the same rate and for the same reasons that everyone else in America does.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051111/news_lz1n11vets.html

>>“Vietnam veterans likely die from suicide at about the same rate and for the same reasons that everyone else in America does.”<<

Aw shucks, here I was all these years thinking that my Nam buddies and I were something special because we hadn’t used a .45 to aerate our skulls. What a tremendous letdown!