Why National Guard and Reservist Suicide Numbers May Be Misleading

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/why-national-guard-and-reservist-suicide-numbers-may-be-misleading/?ref=middleeast



Why National Guard and Reservist Suicide Numbers May Be Misleading
By ANDREW W. LEHREN
May 16, 2013, 4:54 pm

More than 80 percent of the services members who committed suicide in recent years had never been in combat. This is one of the many statistics that the Pentagon and researchers are currently struggling to explain. My colleague James Dao and I explore the tragic rising military suicide numbers in an article today.

The numbers above are striking. Over the course of nearly 12 years and two wars, suicide among active-duty troops has risen steadily, hitting a record of 350 in 2012.

The graphic above does not tell the full, complicated picture, however. One aspect of suicide statistics that is often overlooked – in large part because it’s so hard to quantify – is the number of National Guard and Reserve members of the various branches of the armed service who commit suicide when they are not on active duty.

Army Guard members and reservists appear to have higher suicide rates than active-duty soldiers, according to research and published Pentagon reports. These numbers, which are already escalating well above comparable civilian levels, may also be undercounting the problem by not counting all the National Guard members and reservists who are not on active duty, some experts say. That is because those deaths are often handled by local coroners who may not document that they involve members of the military.