But a tepid Senate hearing on Wednesday, with no testimony from lower-ranking combat troops from Iraq or Afghanistan, does little to explain why.
By Mark Benjamin - March 19, 2009 WASHINGTON -- The Senate Armed Services Committee hearings Wednesday on the rising suicide rate among U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan revealed some frightening new data, but did little to investigate the underlying causes of what is emerging as one of the darkest, most disturbing legacies of the wars.
Last year the Army had its highest suicide rate on record -- 140 soldiers. But new data from the Army on Wednesday showed the number jumping even higher. Forty-eight soldiers have already killed themselves so far this year. If that rate keeps up, nearly 225 Army soldiers will be dead by their own hand by the end of 2009.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., called the latest trends "alarming." Army Vice Chief of Staff Peter Chiarelli admitted, "I, and the other senior leaders of our Army, readily acknowledge that these current figures are unacceptable."
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Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Financial Crisis Is Driving Americans to Suicide
By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com - Pushed past their breaking points, people are robbing banks to pay the rent, setting homes on fire -- even taking their own lives.
The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.
In the three months since, the pain has been migrating upwards. A growing number of the world's rich have garnered headlines for high profile, financially-motivated suicides. Take the New Zealand-born "millionaire financier" who leapt in front of an express train in Great Britain or the "German tycoon" who did much the same in his homeland. These have, with increasing regularity, hit front pages around the world. An example would be New York-based money manager René-Thierry Magnon de la Villehuchet, who slashed his wrists after he "lost more than $1 billion of client money, including much, if not all, of his own family's fortune." In the end, he was yet another victim of financial swindler Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
An unknown but rising number of less wealthy but distinctly well-off workers in the financial field have also killed themselves as a result of the economic crisis -- with less press coverage. Take, for instance, a 51-year-old former analyst at Bear Stearns. Learning that he would be laid off after JPMorgan Chase took over his failed employer, he "threw himself out of the window" of his 29th-floor apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Or consider the 52-year-old commercial real estate broker from suburban Chicago who "took his life in a wildlife preserve" just "a month after he publicly worried over a challenging market," or the 50-year-old "managing partner at Leeward Investments" from San Carlos, California, who got wiped out "in the markets" and "suffocated himself to death."
Beverly Hills clinical psychologist Leslie Seppinni caught something of our moment when she told Forbes magazine that this was "the first time in her 18-year career that businessmen are calling her with suicidal impulses over their financial state." In the last three months, alone, "she has intervened in at least 14 cases of men seriously considering taking their lives." Seppinni offered this observation: "They feel guilt and shame because they think they should have known what was coming with the market or they should have pulled out faster."
Still, it's mostly on Main Street, not Wall Street, that people are being driven to once unthinkable extremes. And while it's always impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to drastic acts, violent or otherwise, many of those recently reported are undoubtedly tied, at least in part, to the way the bottom seems to be falling out of the economy.
As a result, reports of people driven to anything from armed robbery to financially-motivated suicide in response to new fiscal realities continue to bubble to the surface. And since only a certain percentage of such acts receive media coverage, the drumbeat of what is being reported definitely qualifies as startling.
read more digg story
The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.
In the three months since, the pain has been migrating upwards. A growing number of the world's rich have garnered headlines for high profile, financially-motivated suicides. Take the New Zealand-born "millionaire financier" who leapt in front of an express train in Great Britain or the "German tycoon" who did much the same in his homeland. These have, with increasing regularity, hit front pages around the world. An example would be New York-based money manager René-Thierry Magnon de la Villehuchet, who slashed his wrists after he "lost more than $1 billion of client money, including much, if not all, of his own family's fortune." In the end, he was yet another victim of financial swindler Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
An unknown but rising number of less wealthy but distinctly well-off workers in the financial field have also killed themselves as a result of the economic crisis -- with less press coverage. Take, for instance, a 51-year-old former analyst at Bear Stearns. Learning that he would be laid off after JPMorgan Chase took over his failed employer, he "threw himself out of the window" of his 29th-floor apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Or consider the 52-year-old commercial real estate broker from suburban Chicago who "took his life in a wildlife preserve" just "a month after he publicly worried over a challenging market," or the 50-year-old "managing partner at Leeward Investments" from San Carlos, California, who got wiped out "in the markets" and "suffocated himself to death."
Beverly Hills clinical psychologist Leslie Seppinni caught something of our moment when she told Forbes magazine that this was "the first time in her 18-year career that businessmen are calling her with suicidal impulses over their financial state." In the last three months, alone, "she has intervened in at least 14 cases of men seriously considering taking their lives." Seppinni offered this observation: "They feel guilt and shame because they think they should have known what was coming with the market or they should have pulled out faster."
Still, it's mostly on Main Street, not Wall Street, that people are being driven to once unthinkable extremes. And while it's always impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to drastic acts, violent or otherwise, many of those recently reported are undoubtedly tied, at least in part, to the way the bottom seems to be falling out of the economy.
As a result, reports of people driven to anything from armed robbery to financially-motivated suicide in response to new fiscal realities continue to bubble to the surface. And since only a certain percentage of such acts receive media coverage, the drumbeat of what is being reported definitely qualifies as startling.
read more digg story
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Army to report record number of suicides
The U.S. Army will report Thursday the highest level of suicides among its soldiers since it began tracking the rate 28 years ago.
Statistics obtained by CNN show the Army will report 128 confirmed suicides last year and another 15 suspected suicides in cases under investigation among active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves.
The confirmed rate of suicides for the Army was 20.2 per 100,000. Army officials were reviewing the suspected suicides Wednesday. If any of them are confirmed, the rate would rise.
Last month, Army officials said the nation's suicide rate was 19.5 people per 100,000, a 2005 figure considered the most recent.
Military officials have long said it is difficult to compare the military suicide rate with that of the private sector because of demographic differences and overall human stress factors. Another factor is that military suicides tend to be committed by young men with access to weapons.
For 2007, the Army reported 115 confirmed suicides, then the highest level since 1980, when it began tracking suicides.
The Army is expected to announce a new effort to study the problem and determine why its suicide-prevention programs appear not to be working, and the extent to which post-combat stress may be a contributing factor.
Many of the suicides occur after troops return home. The death of Army Spc. Tim Bowman was such a case. The 23-year-old killed himself in 2005 after returning from Iraq.
read more | digg story
Statistics obtained by CNN show the Army will report 128 confirmed suicides last year and another 15 suspected suicides in cases under investigation among active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves.
The confirmed rate of suicides for the Army was 20.2 per 100,000. Army officials were reviewing the suspected suicides Wednesday. If any of them are confirmed, the rate would rise.
Last month, Army officials said the nation's suicide rate was 19.5 people per 100,000, a 2005 figure considered the most recent.
Military officials have long said it is difficult to compare the military suicide rate with that of the private sector because of demographic differences and overall human stress factors. Another factor is that military suicides tend to be committed by young men with access to weapons.
For 2007, the Army reported 115 confirmed suicides, then the highest level since 1980, when it began tracking suicides.
The Army is expected to announce a new effort to study the problem and determine why its suicide-prevention programs appear not to be working, and the extent to which post-combat stress may be a contributing factor.
Many of the suicides occur after troops return home. The death of Army Spc. Tim Bowman was such a case. The 23-year-old killed himself in 2005 after returning from Iraq.
read more | digg story
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
TV station defends plan to show man's suicide
Mr Ewert explains his decision to visit the assisted suicide clinic earlier in the documentary, The Suicide Tourist
LONDON - A British television channel said Wednesday it was planning to broadcast the death of an American man at a Swiss euthanasia clinic.The death of 59-year-old Craig Ewert in 2006 is due to be shown Wednesday during a documentary on the Sky Real Lives channel. Ewert had degenerative motor neuron disease and died at a clinic in Zurich...
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