Army official: Suicides in January 'terrifying'

Army official: Suicides in January 'terrifying'

One week after the U.S. Army announced record suicide rates among its soldiers last year, the service is worried about a spike in possible suicides in the new year.

The Army said 24 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in January alone -- six times as many as killed themselves in January 2008, according to statistics released Thursday.

...

If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January.

"This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on."

This is terrible.

I wonder if some of the added focus on the subject has also had the impact of pushing the numbers higher? What a terrible mess.

See also, US soldier suicides hit record high


[edit on 5-2-2009 by loam]

Ya i was reading this earlier its sad to see this happening to our military forces these individuals fight to protect and serve this country and to be pushed to this sucks it sucks to hear about it really sucks for the families involved i hope sometime soon we can our country together god bless the USA.

The pressure of combat, lonliness, depression, and an unwillingness to admit to depression and seek treatment makes hard on anyone in the military. There is a tendency to want soldiers to "bootstrap it," to pull themselves out of the funk and just keep going. Plus there is the comraderay, and the attitude that you can't let your squad mates down. If you leave, you leave a hole in the squad. His replacement will have to earn the trust of his squad mates, and they will have to earn his.
In addition, the depressed soldier will have a mark on his record that can interfere with promotions, or even lead to a medical discharge.
To us, sitting here in our nice safe homes, these might seem like trivial things, but to a young man in a combat zone, this is the perfect storm.
For this reason, if no other, we should keep our troops in our prayers.
(and for those of you who don't beleive in God and prayer, just ignore the that last sentence. I don't feel like fighting over the existence of God. I believe, you don't, that's that!)

[edit on 6-2-2009 by kettlebellysmith]

hell weve had 4 attempts alone in our company in the last 6 months, 2 guys found with cut wrists, 1 guy tried to jump out of a 4th floor window and another one was about to slice his wrist.....and this is one company (about 200 soldiers) may i remind you

all of this is due to stress and an incompitent mental health unit and a MAJOR FAIL of our chain of command, would would rather act after it happens then before...

War is quite barbaric and primitive - even with all the latest weapons.

It is wrong to kill and rape and take land by force. Children and women-
Wow what great strength and power(F cowards). I do not believe anyone with a conscience can live with this reality(especially being forced to KILL)

These times are the culmination of the unevolved materialistic male ruling this planet. This is the end of this civilisarion!

I will be considering my own suicide(no torture for me thankyou), I believe the insanity will all be played out violently everywhere.

reply to post by HulaAnglers


Get help. Seriously.

Tell someone you love to help you.

Yea I agree with poster above..she does need help. BADLY.

I was going to come in here and say something about this subject since I am a former Marine, but what she just said pissed me off, so I dont even feel like it anymore. I just wish that some of these (crazy)people who have these sick ideas about our troops were thrown in the middle of it all, to give thema real dose of reality.


[edit on 6-2-2009 by Common Good]

I heard a radio commercial for that hotlone. It was read by Gary Sinise (spelling?) better known as Lt. Dan.

Later, during the top of the hour newsbreak, a story contributed interpersonal stressors as a likely catalyst as a number of the suicides involved people in troubled relationships or so the story reported.

Were similar things occurring after WWI and WWII? I dont think I've come across any materials claiming so.

I'd be interested to know if this generation of people are honestly different than previous generations in their ability to "handle" various obstacles and difficulties or if there is no difference and just a lack of reporting or follow up on those who came home from Europe.

Given what I've seen of the average 16-28 year old and what I know and have seen of the average 70+ year old I'm willing to bet something is definitely different.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

I'd be interested to know if this generation of people are honestly different than previous generations in their ability to "handle" various obstacles and difficulties or if there is no difference and just a lack of reporting or follow up on those who came home from Europe.

The age equivalent of the children that we are sending off to war is about age fourteen.

When I was age eight I had the responsibility of fixing breakfast for my two siblings, getting them dressed and off to school before going off to school myself.

I returned home from school had to retrieve my siblings from the neighbors and get them out of their good clothes into their play clothes. I had to clean up the kitchen from morning breakfast and start dinner. At age eight! Children today can't do half of that at age sixteen.

For the curious my Mom worked twelve hour shifts and had to leave the house at six and returned home at six pm. My Dad drove a truck so he was on the road a lot and away from home days at a time.

We have coddled and handicapped our children. We have babied them and protected them and now we have thrown them out into a world that is ready to have "them" for breakfast.

Sure they felt confident and capable. After all they have been playing war games all of their lives. It is easy. No sweat. Until you are in the real world with real bullets coming your way and knowing that you can’t hit ctrl-alt-del to remove the memories of what people looked like after you have shot them or after they have been blown to bits.

You can’t get hit an icon and restart the game when you buddy is dying in your arms and you are covered in his blood.

Another thing that you might want to consider is the caliber of weapon our children are using and the amount of damage that they can do. I am sure that that also has changed since you were last at war.

No our children were never prepared for this and it is our fault. We can’t undo what has been done but we can get help to our children.

I am so big on taking responsibility for your actions and not blaming others for things that you have done but our children are not to blame for this one and we have got to let them know it.

We failed them and we have to make sure they know it. Maybe then they will not feel as if they are carrying the whole weight of the world on their shoulders being torn between what they believe is expected of them, what they are being ordered to do and what they feel is right.

War is hell we all know that but we taught our children it was a game. It is no game and they have found out the hard way without anyone being there for them and we are surprised at the outcome?

We are venturing into a new world and a new way of life. We had better prepare our children or they are going to turn on themselves or on us.

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
Were similar things occurring after WWI and WWII? I dont think I've come across any materials claiming so.

Acording to the Washington Post, suicide records for the military were not kept until 1980.

source

Suicide would certainly be something that would not have been spoken of in the first half of the 20th century. Today, with advanced forms of communication, its difficult to keep it a secret. Mental health in general isn't a hush-hush topic anymore. That's why its shocking that these men aren't getting the help that they need.

Let's see....spa trips for the corporate rich or mental health support for the men and women who fight to keep us safe?

reply to post by Aislin


Thats what pisses me off the most about some groups, they talk about how important our military men and women are to us and then when they get home they want to be as cheap as they possibly can with the people who fought to protect our interests.

Even if I do not agree with the war, and I SO dont agree with this one, the troops are still laying their lives on the line for America.

Why I think the guys are becoming more suicidal is that it is hard on people emotionally to be in a combat situation. It is hard to see all the trauma, and have to look over your shoulder all the time. Cumulatively, if you dont get a break from it, it can crack you.

Not to mention they are stuck over there for longer tours than they should be, and I can imagine that is putting pressure on their personal relationships back home. I can only imagine how many of their relationships have gone south because of this.

We just need to bring them home.

The extreme behavior driven by any kind of "war"
goes against our natural tendencies.
It is not how we entered the world.
This behavior has been learned -
and proves to be too much for our natural loving nature to endure.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander

We just need to bring them home.

You hit the nail directly on the head. BRING THEM HOME!!! Enough is enough!

WOW you think WAR is ok and normal, do you seriously think it is not going to come our way. I have a draftable son and I did not give him life for him to kill or get killed, it is sad but realistic to consider he would be forced into such a situation.

As for me, I choose a quiet peacefull death, when I decide!
This is not a cry for help, this is a judgement! and who is better to judge than a victim. Is this a planet of death or life...

reply to post by Common Good


I am happy I pissed you off! I used to go visit my grandfather every sunday in a veterans home. I remember the baracks were filled, ww1 victims seemed to be better taken care of back then. My brother and I would run around and make the old lonely broken men laugh. I learned the proper use of the word "basket case" because alot of the men there had no limbs and where placed big wicker baskets on the floor.

For some reason I have been in contact with various vets of various wars and none of them had anything good to say about any of it, the deception, top officers would knowingly comand lower officers to their deaths...

War ruins lives, it interferes with the natural cycles, bad chemicals should not be used on the planet either - violence is not our natural essence! Thats ALL

reply to post by loam


Extremely sad !

I only see a rise in suicides happening within the military of the world in the near future. These soldiers do not want to be drugged so that it becomes easier to murder the innocent on behalf of the rich. That's why they don't seek medical assistance. They know that medical personnel will only camouflage the sick perverted life they are forced to lead. These people have a conscience and realize that the killing is not warranted, therefore a criminal act. What can the soldier do about a criminal act that his higher ups direct him to do? Nothing....

If you know a soldier in your local area, talk to him and ask what he really thinks of the military. Please be skeptical of ATS military posts that promote the military or backing the government. If the numbers of suicides are up in the military you think you would see a voice on ATS parallelling this maybe complaining. But you won't see anything of the sort because these military people are scared that their being monitored. The military monitors its employees and any sites they visit.

I really don't think you will find too many serving soldiers who will make statements or negative comments about the employer. That would be like someone who worked at Microhard sending emails from work and making statements about SECRET, new technologies to come, or how the CEO and all the staff are in a pedophile ring. I'm sure company security would be on that person very fast. IMO

Twilight of the Psychopaths

by Dr. Kevin Barrett


“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.” – John Lennon, before his murder by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman

When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization he said it would be a good idea. But that oft-cited quote, is misleading, assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing.

Civilized people, we are told, live peacefully and cooperatively with their fellows, sharing the necessary labour in order to obtain the leisure to develop arts and sciences. And while that would be a good idea, it is not a good description of what has been going on in the so-called advanced cultures during the past 8,000 years.

Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and “warfare.” Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder.

The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple:

1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic mass murderers;

2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e. seize control of their labour power and its fruits);

3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process.

Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse. The inventor of civilization — the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers—was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies — especially military hierarchies.



Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers — unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.

In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written military history, to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that military science is less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species. The true “Revolution in Military Affairs” was not Donald Rumsfeld’s move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall’s discovery in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line of fire would use their weapons: “Those (80-85%) who did not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges” (Grossman, p. 4).

Marshall’s discovery and subsequent research, proved that in all previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers — the 5% who are natural-born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily-insane imitators—did almost all the killing. Normal men just went through the motions and, if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier, even if that meant giving up their own. The implication: Wars are ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This cannot be good for humanity’s genetic endowment!)

Marshall’s work, brought a Copernican revolution to military science. In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill for his country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight was a (cowardly) aberration. The truth, as it turned out, was that the normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The sane majority, would rather die than fight.

The implication, too frightening for even the likes of Marshall and Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers’ behaviour in battle had been set by psychopaths. That meant that psychopaths were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that psychopaths were in control of society’s perception of military affairs. Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in seemingly sane, normal society.

How could that be? In Political Ponerology, Andrzej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests) psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths.

So-called conspiracy theorists, some of whom deserve the pejorative connotation of that much-abused term, often imagine that secret societies of Jews, Jesuits, bankers, communists, Bilderbergers, Muslim extremists, papists, and so on, are secretly controlling history, doing dastardly deeds, and/or threatening to take over the world. As a leading “conspiracy theorist” according to Wikipedia, I feel eminently qualified to offer an alternative conspiracy theory which, like the alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11, is both simpler and more accurate than the prevailing wisdom: The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us.




Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld—the criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it. In 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or “endgame” (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men, economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops experts and PR specialists—in short, the whole sick crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so-called civilization. And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public.

Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. As George H. W. Bush said to journalist Sarah McClendon, December 1992, “If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.” Given that Bush is reported to have participated in parties where child prostitutes were sodomized and otherwise abused, among his many other crimes, his statement to McClendon should be taken seriously.

Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others’ emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals.

Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being — a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish — militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.

Above all, we need to inform the public about how psychopaths co-opt and corrupt normal human beings. One way they do this, is by manipulating shame and denial — emotions foreign to psychopaths but common and easily-induced among normals.

Consider how gangs and secret societies (psychopaths’ guilds in disguise) recruit new members. Some criminal gangs and satanist covens demand that candidates for admission commit a murder to “earn their stripes.” Skull and Bones, the Yale-based secret society that supplies the CIA with drug-runners, mind-rapists, child abusers and professional killers, requires neophytes to lie naked in a coffin and masturbate in front of older members while reciting the candidate’s entire sexual history. By forcing the neophyte to engage in ritualized behaviour that would be horrendously shameful in normal society, the psychopaths’ guild destroys the candidate’s normal personality, assuming he had one in the first place, and turns the individual into a co-opted, corrupt, degraded shadow of his former self — a manufactured psychopath or psychopath’s apprentice.

This manipulation of shame has the added benefit of making psychopathic organizations effectively invisible to normal society. Despite easily available media reports, American voters in 2004 simply refused to see that the two major-party presidential candidates had lain naked in a coffin masturbating in front of older Bonesmen in order to gain admission to Skull and Bones and thus become members of the criminal overworld. Likewise, many Americans have long refused to see that hawkish elements of the overworld, operating through the CIA, had obviously been the murderers of JFK, MLK, RFK, JFK Jr., Malcolm X, ChÈ, AllendÈ, Wellstone, Lumumba, Aguilera, Diem, and countless other relatively non-psychopathic leaders. They refuse to see the continuing murders of millions of people around the world in what amounts to an American holocaust. They refuse to see the evidence that the psychopaths’ guilds running America’s most powerful institutions use the most horrific forms of sexualized abuse imaginable to induce multiple-personality-disorder in child victims, then use the resulting mind-control slaves as disposable drug-runners, prostitutes, Manchurian candidates, and even diplomatic envoys. And of course they refuse to see that 9/11 was a transparently obvious inside job, and that their own psychopath-dominated military-intelligence apparatus is behind almost every major terrorist outrage of recent decades.

All of this psychopathic behaviour at the top of the social hierarchy is simply too shameful for ordinary people to see, so they avert their gaze, just as wives of husbands who are sexually abusing their children sometimes refuse to see what is happening in plain view. If deep, deep denial were a river in Egypt, American citizens’ wilful blindness would be more like the Marianas Trench.

But thanks to the power of the internet, people everywhere are waking up. The only obvious non-psychopath among Republican presidential candidates, Ron Paul, also happens to be the only candidate in either party with significant grassroots support.

If “love” is embedded in the Revolution Ron Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul — a kindly, soft-spoken physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies — implicitly recognizes that government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks and balances, lest the psychopath’s tools, fear and hatred, replace love as the glue that binds society together.

The decline in militarism since World War II in advanced countries, the spread of literacy and communications technology, and the people’s growing demands for a better life, together represent a gathering force that terrifies the pathocracy, (those alternately competing-then-cooperating gangs of psychopaths who have ruled through lies, fear and intimidation since the dawn of so-called civilization).

Since nuclear weapons have made war obsolete, the pathocracy is terrified that its favourite social control mechanism — ritualized mass slaughter — is increasingly unavailable. And if war was the great human tragedy, the pathocrats’ pathetic attempt at a war-substitute — the transparently phoney “war on terror” — is repeating it as sheerest farce.

Truly, we are witnessing the twilight of the psychopaths. Whether in their death throes they succeed in pulling down the curtain of eternal night on all of us, or whether we resist them and survive to see the dawn of a civilization worthy of the name, is the great decision in which all of us others, however humbly, are now participating.by Dr. Kevin Barrett

[edit on 7-2-2009 by HulaAnglers]

This is very disheartening. The Canadian Military is fairing about as well.

Canada's Military Suicide Rate Doubled

I have always been a military supporter...that is I support the troops.

Barret offers a description of the problem and little by way of solutions. Sadly and to my dismay, I found endless "quoting" of his gospel, yet only one or two had enough understanding of the COMPLEX systems in place (including natural human conditions and propensities) to offer even a few radical solutions.


So lets all stand around and point fingers while soldiers and civilians die for what they believe in or what someone else believes in. Great. Proactive NOT.

The situation is not a simple one...it is not so easily denounced as merely a psychopathic rule of force.

Contrary to popular belief wars ARE a part of human nature and are a part of every species on the planet be it for territory, mating rights, clan hierarchy, governance, food rights...it's a huge list of reasons why animals (including humans) fight and war amongst themselves.

There must be a way to live peaceably...so why after hundreds of thousands of years have we not found it?

Personally I am rather sickened by the attitude of some people here and around, that the friends I have in the military are "psychopaths" or heartless and mindless unconscionable murderers all.

The #1 classification of a psychopath is one who, cannot through absolute inability (mental impairment), learn from mistakes and or take responsibility

Suicides in the military come about for many reasons not all associated to killing puppies and babies as they apparently do "all the time" by many people's uneducated accounts.

I recommend further research for those who think it's such a cut and dried issue.

Psychopaths wouldn't suffer the way the majority of troops do as they would be mentally incapable of suffering...no remorse, no shame, no loneliness, no guilt, no fear, no sorrow or grief, no stress over being in a war at all. Hell it would be a hay day for the average psychopath to get a gun and have at 'er all willy nilly. Suicide for a psychopath with ample ammo and targets? PLUS a free pass to shoot at supposedly "anything"???

Barrett loves his soap box, and he doesn't seem to learn by his mistakes either. He is quite aggressive and defensive. he enjoys and takes pride in offending or angering. he is prevented from admitting any error by his ego...starting to sound like a familiar pattern huh?

I can agree with some points made and they have been made by far more reputable and less arrogant and aggressive individuals. I wouldn't go around quoting him as though his word were the gospel however as his is a well spun slant and lacking many many facts from the "other side"...naturally. god forbid anyone look at BOTH sides of an issue...sheesh.

Solutions will never come from apathetic responses like blaming and endless sympathy. We can be angry or sad to our hearts content and it does nothing to change the situation.

My whole family was military right up to my brother. I would have been too were it not for my absolute disdain for being told what to do.

People so foolishly believe that it is impossible to adhere to a system while enacting (often radical) changes to that very system, but that is the ONLY way it will be done.

Suicides in the military during Vietnam...high. Suicides during WW1 and !! and the Korean war...also high...ask any vet if he knew of anyone who killed themselves...he's either know someone directly or know a friend of a friend who did.

Psychopathy has very little to do with it.

reply to post by justgeneric


I know! I have a similar attitude(Barrett) -

But I bully bullies, I can't help it and also I have a bad habit of defending the helpless too. My biggest flaw though. is my sixth sense, I really have a hard time pretending that I am well, when some parts of my race are being gutted as we speak. To us six sensors, the invisible is our fighting ground, we are compelled to take the red pill - It ain't pretty, and I Know to be true everything this Dr. wrote.

[edit on 7-2-2009 by HulaAnglers]