Posting # 34: The story of suicide in the military

The story: We are often told that if a young man or woman is feeling aimless, failing to launch, doesn’t want to go to college, wants to pay for college using the GI Bill, or simply wants employment, enlisting in the US military is a good option. We frequently hear anecdotes that young people mature as a consequence of serving in the military, having learned how to follow directions and complete a task, all while being housed, fed, clothed, and having healthcare. A career coaching organization promotes joining the military, saying: The “Military rejuvenates your sense of optimism and passion to achieve lifelong goals. It is undeniable that military service changes you for good and makes you want to be the person your society, colleagues, friends, and family members can be proud of.” And the forces tell this story in their recruiting ads: Army’s “Be All You Can Be”; Air Force’s “Above All”; Marines’ “The Few. The Proud”; Navy’s “Forged by the Sea”; and Space Force’s “Guardians Wanted.”

My take on the story: What the story does not include are the many risks of joining the military.

I have some direct experience with this tale. When I expressed concern that my children could no longer be on my healthcare plan once they turned 26, my mother, who had spent more than fifty years affiliated with the military (but never on active-duty) and still was getting benefits, urged my children to join the Army. She had never before encouraged my children to join the military. So what I heard with this urging was not the patriotic benefit to the nation or the nobility of public service or the honor of joining such an esteemed institution, or even acquiring skills that could be parlayed into a post-military career. Instead, it was entirely about how my children would benefit personally by having access to healthcare at no cost to themselves.

But there obviously is a HUGE cost to serving, both to the servicemember and the servicemember’s family. I had lived through my father’s Army career being the reason for our household moves every two or three years (and why, before I went to college at 18, I had attended ten different schools), his absence from our family life with long work hours, his two, year-long deployments to Vietnam as a combat helicopter pilot, his disappointment with not being promoted to General, and finally, his death at 58 as an outcome of Agent Orange exposure 20 years earlier. I had my own active-duty contact with the Army and experienced firsthand my personal lack of agency, sexual harassment as one of the Regular Army’s first women, and what I perceived to be the institution’s reactive crisis culture, or what I called “putting out fires.” Consequently, because of these costs, even though many of my nieces and nephews joined the military, I never suggested to my own children that they consider applying to ROTC, any of the service academies, or enlisting. Even if it meant access to healthcare.

Among the many costs of being in the military that we Americans have come to expect are: death in combat, overuse body injuries, Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), Moral Injury, Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI), and sexual harassment if not sexual assault. What we don’t expect—especially because the story tells us that only good comes from being in the military—is that active-duty military, especially lower-enlisted ranks and veterans, are more prone to taking their own lives than civilians and that they are nine times more likely to die by suicide than by combat.

Suicide is a delicate subject, one rarely discussed openly because, I think, of the fear that open discussion will encourage the act. Still, though I’m hesitant to research and write this posting, as is the case with all of my SoldierGirl postings, I think Americans need to know what is going on with their military forces. If you are uncertain about reading this posting, I understand.

Suicide in the general US population

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), except for a brief two-year COVID-19 dip (2019-2020) in the number of US suicides, they have risen consistently since 2001. In 2018, there were 48,344 suicides; in 2019, there were 47,511; in 2020, 45,979 took their lives. By 2022, the total number exceeded 49K. This latter number is measured as 14.21 per 100,000 or 14.21/100K.

Notably, though, the CDC reports that the national suicide rate for males was three to four and one-half times the rate for females during the 2001–2021 period. The American Institute for Boys and Men report that “Men consistently represent an outsized share of total suicides. In 1972, they accounted for 71% of suicides, a figure that rose to 80% in 2023.” Richard Reeves of Of Boys and Men comments that the national suicide rate is of epidemic proportions among men and boys. From 2007-2021, he notes that among 10-24-year-old males there have been 5600 suicides, or 16.1/100K, whereas among women and girls, the number is 1526 or 4.7/100K. “Up to 2010, the rise in male suicide was being driven by men in middle age,” but since then, “the main story has been one of rising suicide rates among men aged 15 to 34” (emphasis added). According to Reeves, by 2023, the 15-24-year-old males taking their lives were at 21/100K and females of that age group were at 5/100K.

The US Military

It makes sense, then, that the US institution—the military—largely composed of these young men would also suffer high rates of suicide.

Anecdotally, though, US military servicemembers have been said to end their own lives at lower rates than the civilian population, that they are too hopeful and optimistic in their patriotism to even consider taking their lives.

But another way to understand this absence of stories about suicide is that military culture is so shaming of any signs of weakness or doubt that servicepeople who show these signs—men especially—are too devastatingly embarrassed to stay alive. As one male survivor of a suicide attempt while deployed in Iraq says, “The Army instilled in us ideals and values of servant leadership and selfless service. I experienced anything but those things. We were no Band of Brothers…[and instead more] Lord of the Flies where the strong and the vindictive thrived and the meek did anything but inherit the Earth.”

In the eyes of friends and family, I was brave for asking for help. In the eyes of the Army, I was another successful intervention in a long line of statistics that ended tragically more often than not. But in the eyes of those who actually mattered in my life at the time—the eyes of soldiers—I was a bitch. A pussy. A coward…I still wonder sometimes: What [worse names] would they call me if I were dead?

The fact is, however, taking one’s own life is not a recent phenomenon. It has been a part of the US military since there has been a US military. Well before and after the Civil War, historians have found high rates of suicide among active-duty servicepeople. In a 2019 study of the US Army from 1819-2017, they found that:

Starting in 1843, the overall trend in annual suicide rates among active-duty service members in the US Army increased, with a peak rate of 118.3 per 100,000 in 1883. From that [astonishingly] historical high point, the rate decreased in 3 successive waves, each corresponding to the end of the following wars: the Spanish-American War (1898), World War I (1914-1918), and World War II (1939-1945). The latter had the historically lowest rate of 5 per 100,000 in 1944 to 1945. During the Cold War (approximately 1945-1991), the rate generally stabilized in the low teens to mid-teens (i.e., 10-15 per 100,000). The rate increased again during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, increasing to 29.7 per 100,000 in 2012. From 2008 to present [December 2019], the annual rate has remained within the range of 20.2 to 29.7 per 100,000. (emphasis added)

By 2023, that number had climbed to 36.6/100K and seemed to continue climbing into 2024, with, by May, the number of active-duty servicepeople taking their lives at 31.8/100K. From 2001-2021, 30,177 active-duty military had taken their lives; approximately 500 active-duty servicemembers have taken their lives in each of the following years.

One might easily conclude that suicidal ideation is a personal problem and that some sort of mental health illness drives one to take his life. One might also conclude that having been traumatized by combat or being deployed to war left a servicemember hopeless enough to end life, even though less than half of those who took their lives had been in combat or deployed. One might further conclude that medical conditions such as PTS or TBI would lead servicepeople to take their lives. While the latter have been found to contribute to suicidal ideation (in addition to chronic pain and sleep disorders), military psychologists are concluding that other “psychosocial” factors are at play: “financial woes,” “relationship problems, administrative/legal issues and workplace difficulties.”

More “psychosocial” and identity factors are being recognized to explain why a servicemember in particular takes his life, factors that turn out to be fundamental to military life.

· The first factor is firearms. Nearly 70% of all military suicide deaths are achieved with a firearm, which is not especially surprising, since servicepeople are trained to use firearms better than most civilians. According to the Association for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, use of this weapon is deliberate.

Military personnel are more likely than civilians to use firearms when making a suicide attempt, meaning they are much more likely to die due to how lethal gunshot wounds can be. In general, military personnel seem to make more lethal suicide attempts than civilians, even when using other methods for suicide (e.g., overdose), meaning that they are more likely to die than civilians when they make a suicide attempt.

Furthermore, firearms are used in 79% of homicides committed in the military.

The military’s answer? Not stricter gun control or prohibitions against having private weapons on a military base or challenges to the central stressors of military life. Instead: Secure the weapons.

· The second factor is operational tempo. This is the rate at which military units train, prepare for deployment, and then deploy, the pace of which causes hopelessness and what we in the civilian world might call overwhelming “burn-out.” The Army Times reports in March 2024 that between 2019 and 2021—the period when the national rate of suicide dipped—active-duty Army tank brigades suffered twice the rate of suicide as the rest of the active-duty army. These units are not being deployed to war but, because they are not already based abroad, they are being deployed to train in Europe, Kuwait, Korea, and Iraq. Members of the unit studied in the article reported “they endured countless late nights and early mornings maintaining vehicles only for them [the vehicles] to break repeatedly amid training. And they said the unforgiving pace of work suffocated the spirit of those around them.” In this small tank (AKA armor) unit, six soldiers died by suicide in a 14-month period.

Some analysts call this relationship between “operational tempo” and suicide a “systemic risk factor,” something that would require “the Army to take a very hard look in the mirror about what it's asking its soldiers to do.” But “the institution isn't always incentivized to be as self-reflective.” Thus, DoD continues to treat suicide as an individual problem, not one that is inherent to the institution.

· The third factor is being in the Marines. In the last few years, the active-duty Marine Corps, the smallest and youngest in age of the branches, has had the highest rate of suicide of all, with 34.9/100K dying by suicide in 2022 and increases in 2023. Not only does the “warrior ethos”—which emphasizes discipline, mental toughness, and self-sufficiency—prevent some Marines from seeking help when they are suffering mentally, they are prone to dismiss their physical health ailments for fear of being discharged from the Corps. One unit that was ordered to fire an extraordinary number of long-distance artillery rounds in 2016 and 2017 from Syria to Iraq had a rash of suicides, attributed largely to traumatic brain injuries. These are not simply “headaches.” “Traumatic brain injuries can have profound effects on parts of the body that are nowhere near the skull, because the damage can cause communication with other organs to malfunction. Dozens of the young [Marine] veterans interviewed by The Times said they now had elevated, irregular heartbeats and persistent, painful problems with their digestion” (emphasis added).

· The fourth factor is being a Veteran. The most recent data available indicates that between 2001 and 2021, 131K veterans had taken their own lives, amounting to 33.9/100K. This is a higher rate than for most active-duty servicepeople and for the US civilian population.

Here is some limited information on veterans:

1. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for post-9/11 veterans

2. The 35-54-years-old age group is somewhat prone to suicide

3. American Indian and Alaska Native Veterans are very prone to suicide

4. LGBTQ veterans are exceptionally prone to suicide, at 7 times more likely

5. Women veterans are twice as likely to take their lives as non-veteran women

6. The rate of suicide is significantly higher for those who were NOT deployed but served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

As is the case with active-duty servicemembers, firearms is the primary method for veterans to take their lives, at 72.2%. Socioeconomically disadvantaged (57.1/100K) and unhoused veterans (112.9/100K) are also very disposed to taking their own lives, and veterans who are incarcerated take their own lives at an astonishing 151/100K rate.

Despite all this psychosocial and identity-based data, like the active-duty component of the military, the Veterans’ Administration concludes that securing firearms is the first priority to prevent veteran suicides.

So what?

The story told that only good comes from joining the military is not only incredible, but it is also treacherous. The story preys especially on young men who are unsure of their place in the world, coming as they often do from less-advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and with fewer educational and professional opportunities. They are the very ones who whether on active-duty or a veteran are at greatest risk of taking their own lives. They may very well feel grievance and despair when the good promised to them by the story of joining the military leaves them with “financial woes,” “relationship problems, administrative/legal issues and workplace difficulties.”

But these young men also are indoctrinated with a toxic warrior mentality that denies their authentic ill health, their lack of agency, their very few rights, and their certainty of being used as a pawn.

The Military and Veterans Crisis Line connects those in need to a trained counselor with a single phone call or click of a mouse. This confidential, immediate help is available 24/7 at no cost to active-duty, Guard and reserve members, their families and friends. Contact the Military Crisis Line at 988, then press 1, or access online chat by texting 838255.