Saturday, January 28, 2012

The Air Force's Near-Silent Epidemic













The underlying issues, he said, are character and trust.






Ray said...

Two remarks. First, that the suicide rate is going up is an alarming trend, but this is the sort of thing where the numbers are relatively so small, that statistics can mess with you a lot. Take the Army's 9% drop, for instance: it's a drop from 300 to 278, but if we assume that suicides occur like a Poisson process (fairly standard methodology), then the standard deviation there is about 17, so the drop may be one of those "good things just happen randomly sometimes" results, rather than anything to congratulate the Army's policies about. Similar arguments may apply to any rise in rates. Anecdotal information, such as widespread reports of lack of trust and the uselessness of suicide prevention, is probably more useful than any short-term statistical trends.

Second, it's extremely unfair to compare the suicide rate of the Armed Services to the general population, given very different demographic characteristics. The military is a lot younger, and it is a lot more male - both things that cause suicide to occur at much greater levels.

The suicide rate for young adults aged 20-24 is 12.7/100,000 ( The same site says that 6 times as many males as females died from suicide. Assuming equal numbers of males and females, from just those factors alone, you'd expect on the order of 23/deaths per 100,000. A proper demographic comparison would include various other factors, such as income, regional variation, etc.

Bearing in mind the unusual stresses of military life (even in peacetime), such as being far removed from family and familiar environs, I don't think this is something to excoriate the military about. If anything, I'd say this gives some evidence that the military does a surprisingly good job of providing emotional support and stability to young people in a very turbulent and scary stage of life. That the military is trying to do better is heartening, and that the suicide rate is going up is bad. But these things do not mean that military life is in any way more likely to cause suicide than, say, going to college and then being unemployed, which seems to be the sad and common lot of 20-24 year olds these days.

TOF said...

Wonder how that compares with statistics from post-WWII and post-Korea. Growing up, I can recall a few of the WWII vets who, even as a pre-teen, I thought were stark staring nuts.

Storms24 said...

From my own perspective, I'd have to say that most of my peers have very little regard for the current batch of suicide prevention programs the Air Force has been pushing... Just another mandatory ancillary training square to fill, no more useful than the Info Assurance or the (now defunct) DADT CBT... It was just last week that I heard one airman quip, "If they keep pushing these stupid requirements down my throat, I won't need more suicide prevention training - I'll need homicide prevention training!" It got a few chuckles but it was easy to sense that such frustration was common in the group.
The retired command chief cited in the article was spot on when he talked about the lack of trust in today’s typical wing or squadron. Supervisors don’t “trust” when an airman says he completed a course of training – they want to see the certificate. Nobody “trusts” the evaluation systems (officer or enlisted) - it’s all superlative flak with little relationship to a member’s performance…. Likewise for the awards & decs program that is unabashedly skewed to reward some AFSC’s over others. The faux “year of the family,” the “JET” (aka “in lieu of Army”) deployments, the disparate disciplinary treatment in recent high profile cases, the Fitness program…. Can we really “trust” a service that will retain and forgive the pilot who makes a critical error, endangering multi-million dollar equipment and the lives of fellow airmen…. But then initiates discharge proceedings against the airman who can’t make the 1.5 mile run under 12 minutes?
I can’t say that any of the above can be tied directly to the suicide rate – but I can say that they contribute to the level of frustration, isolation and perhaps desperation in which such tragedies seem to thrive.

OldSarg said...

Storm24 wrapped it all together rather nicely. You can have no trust for leadership when the leadership demonstrates that have no trust of you. Look at the hiring of civilians to monitor the weight/ fitness program. Why? Are those in uniform not trustworthy but you can hire some civilian for $8.00/hr and get the truth? Our clubs are dying on base because the cops haunt the parking lot, while the crew dogs celebrate in their "private" heritage" rooms as if they are the heroes (heritage room = squadron bar for officers only) within eye shot of young airmen, as we prosecute our airmen for drinking under age? Trust must come from the bottom as well as the top. It's a culture. It's missing. . .

Mozart said...

Nice article, came across your site via Gates of Vienna.

I re-posted it at my site.


boinky said...

yes, it is a terrible problem, but you have to remember that this age group has a high suicide rate to begin with.
You note " the suicide rate for the Army is 24.1 per 100,000 personnel, significantly higher than the general population.", but this ignores the sex and age differences in suicides, which tend to be higher in young men (and old men) but lower in women.

Young men have a suicide rate of about 19/20, or maybe higher: cdc link claims that "From 1999 to 2008, the suicide death rate for persons aged 45–64 years increased overall (from 13.2 to 17.6 per 100,000 population) and for white men (from 22.6 to 30.7)".

The suicide rate for soldiers, therefore, is not much higher than expected.