APNewsBreak: Military suicides drop; unclear why

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/11/11/2885428/apnewsbreak-military-suicides.html

APNewsBreak: Military suicides drop; unclear why
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated PressNovember 11, 2013 Updated 9 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Suicides across the military have dropped by more than 22 percent this year, defense officials said, amid an array of new programs targeting what the Defense Department calls an epidemic that took more service members' lives last year than the war in Afghanistan did during that same period.

Military officials, however, were reluctant to pin the decline on the broad swath of detection and prevention efforts, acknowledging that they still don't fully understand why troops take their own lives. And since many of those who have committed suicide in recent years had never served on the warfront, officials also do not attribute the decrease to the end of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan.

Still, they offered some hope that after several years of studies, the escalating emphasis on prevention across all the services may finally be taking hold.

With two months to go in this calendar year, defense officials say there have been 245 suicides by active-duty service members as of Oct. 27. At the same time last year there had already been 316. Each of the military services has seen the total go down this year, ranging from an 11 percent dip in the Marine Corps to a 28 percent drop for the Navy. The Air Force had a 21 percent decline, while Army totals fell by 24 percent.