IAP Political Forum

All the more sad when the bastards that made for this situation never saw a day of military service in their lives.

Where was the "support" for these troops? __RemoteOutpost

________________

November 15, 2007

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22762457-5005961,00.html (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22762457-5005961,00.html)

THE US military is experiencing a "suicide epidemic" with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS.

At least 6256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 - an average of 17 a day - the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.

While the suicide rate among the general population was 8.9 per 100,000, the level among veterans was between 18.7 and 20.8 per 100,000.

That figure rose to 22.9 to 31.9 suicides per 100,000 among veterans aged 20 to 24 - almost four times the non-veteran average for the age group.

"Those numbers clearly show an epidemic of mental health problems,'' CBS quoted veterans' rights advocate Paul Sullivan as saying.

CBS quoted the father of a 23-year-old soldier who shot himself in 2005 as saying the military did not want the true scale of the problem to be known.

"Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total,'' Mike Bowman said.

"They don't want the true numbers of casualties to really be known.''

There are 25 million veterans in the United States, 1.6 million of whom served in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to CBS.

"Not everyone comes home from the war wounded, but the bottom line is nobody comes home unchanged,'' Paul Rieckhoff, a former Marine and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America said on CBS.

The network said it was the first time that a nationwide count of veteran suicides had been conducted.

The tally was reached by collating suicide data from individual states for both veterans and the general population from 1995.

Yeah it's insane. Last sunday one my way home from work I was listening to some people involved with the documentary "the ground truth" (look it up). They were talking about the lack of mental care provided by the VA. Give the documentary a look, I'm in the midst of getting it myself.

Trunk magnets don't buy mental health care for veterans. They just make the wearer feel good about themselves.

Well, let's see if the CBS numbers hold true that there is an epidemic of suicide among veterans.  I mean, we certainly don't want to believe it just because they fed it to us, right?

In the United States, male veterans outnumber female veterans at a ratio of approximately 13:1.
Source: http://www1.va.gov/vetdata/docs/4X6_fall07_sharepoint.pdf

Men tend to commit suicide at a rate four times higher than women.
Source: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-us-statistics-and-prevention.shtml#risk

The military is mostly white (60%) and male (85%).
Source: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05952.pdf

With that background, take a good look at CBS' claim:


Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml

I think you can already see where this is going.

The Army suicide rate for active service soldiers (not including the Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard) is 17.3 per 100,000.
Source: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=47074

The suicide rate for males in the general population is 17.6 per 100,000.
Source:  http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/

In other words, male soldiers (active duty) commit suicide at the essentially the same rate as males in the general population.

Also, if you do the arithmetic, the rates for veterans in the age groups that the CBS study closely mirror the rates for non-verterans, when adjusted for gender and age, as men tend to commit suicide at greater rates than women in the same age categories.

The CBS report distorts the numbers to draw a sensational, but unfounded, conclusion.  This is reported as "news".

Nice breakdown of the situation there Stephen.

Appluaded

"In other words, male soldiers (active duty) commit suicide at the essentially the same rate as males in the general population." __Stephen Hero

And this is supposed to make the soldier suicides more palatable?

Typical, transfer the stats from one behavioral area to another to make it seem there is nothing out of the "ordinary" going on. Suicides are going on every day, to hold the present military situation accountable is just not good science?

Tell it to the families of the suicides, no doubt it would be of some comfort to them to know that their son or daughter statistically speaking would have offed themselves whether in a war or at home.

Now, if we're into picking, choosing, and spinning distortions, well, we'd have plenty of material out there to work with, wouldn't we?

Yes, there's been a lot of feeding going on.
_______

Opmod

If you're going to applaud that nonsense then at least spell it right.

Nice enough that I just sent your complete post to the editor at the Herald Sun...guess I should have asked first!!  :-\

You've missed the point.

The point of the CBS "news" story was that the war was impacting soldier's mental health to such a great extent that there was this mini-epidemic of suicide within the ranks of the veterans.  This is not the case, as the statistics show.  Therefore, the premise of the CBS story is false.  I make no comment on the tragedy of suicide.  It's a terrible result and leaves lots of victims in its wake.  But that's not the point, is it?  The point is that the rate of suicide is essentially the same within and without the veteran pool once you adjust for gender and age.

I trust that clarifies my position.  I am nowhere suggesting that any suicide is any less tragic for those involved.  I thought that was clear from the post.


Sure they go on.  Sure they're tragic.  But they don't happen to vets at a substantially or materially higher rate than other folks - that was the point.

You're way off the mark on this on.


Great, spelling nazi's.  Always the sign of a strong argument...

Go talk to a psychologist about PTSD. Watch the documentary I posted above. It is the case.

Again, I'm not contesting that war affects people and can be a cause of PTSD.  Back in the Civil War, before they even knew what it was, they used to call it "Soldier's Heart."

But statistically, the rate of suicide among veterans is similar to the rate of suicide of non-veterans within the same gender and age.

I'm not denying that veterans may suffer other debilitating effects from being in comabt, such as PTSD.  But that doesn't necessarily translate into suicide rates that are higher than other people of their same age and gender.

I hope that makes sense.

Stephens point is that the same article could have been written about college students or any other group of society.

If anything, given the aftermath of someone suffering from PTSD, its a wonder that the suicide rates AREN'T higher than the averages for people who DO NOT have such mental scars.

This is why I don't watch American News.  I can't get through one story without throwing a shoe at the TV.  The only thing I can listen to is the weather.   How boring is that?

That's why south park referred to their weight in crap index as "Courics."  I think you get the joke. 
 

"Great, spelling nazi's.  Always the sign of a strong argument..."

No, just a preference for good grammar. By the way, 'Nazi' is a with a capital n and the plural is the addition of an s without the apostrophe denoting the possessive case.

"The point is that the rate of suicide is essentially the same within and without the veteran pool once you adjust for gender and age."

Let's take it a step further than just an observation on the numbers which when all is said and done still define a terrible situation regardless of comparisons. What's your beef with CBS? An adjustment of the numbers in the service of an agenda?

Shall we compare it to the 'adjustments' by the ghouls on Pennsylvania Avenue since they took office or will that take us too far afield?

 

 Ok Stephen I followed your math and at first it sounded convincing. Your figures put the active army suicide rate at the adjusted average... great. And then I looked at the report again  The alarming NEWS in the CBS report was that the suicide rate of veterans rose from 22.9 to 31.9 This 31.9 figure is what was news. You refuted and showed that the 17.9 figure was not high for active duty army. Interesting how you got us all looking at the wrong number.
  The rate increase from 22.9 to  31.9 per 100,000 among VETERANS was the thrust of the story.
This is way above all adjusted averages  and is STILL alarming news.
 The white house doesn't want us to think about the human cost of unjustified war or the lack of the Va's ability to deal with a growing problem among their Vets...apparently you, for some reason, do not either.
 CBS isn't the only source that recognizes there is a growing problem in this area:
 http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/suicide-rates-adouble-male-veterans-13439.html
 http://news.opb.org/article/suicide-rate-vets-twice-non-veterans/
 http://www.militaryconnections.com/news_story.cfm?textnewsid=1925
 http://www.findcounseling.com/help/news/2007/05/veteran_suicide_rates_rise_due_to_inadequate_resources.html
 http://www.4therapy.com/consumer/life_topics/article/9295/115/Male+U.S.+Veterans+Have+Double+the+Suicide+Rate+of+Civilians

This is a statistical peculiarity (apples) which is compared to the general population (oranges)
As demonstrated, when compared to their peers, Veterans are perfectly normal.

You may have noticed that much of the media celebrated veterans day with individual's tales of tragedy, not heroism. This is just an extension of the message that the men and women who serve America in the greatest military the world has ever known, are actually burnt-out, uneducated, murdering stooges.

They (liberal-led MSM) don't actually believe it in their hearts, but they must drive a wedge between the military and the republicans, and they have to make it seem like they care about the military.