Here’s an interesting fact that struck me when I read it, counterintuitive as it is. It’s part of a piece in the WashPost headlined “Five myths about military suicides“:
Repeated tours through the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan are often cited as a primary reason so many troops take their own lives. But the statistics don’t support that explanation. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in the summer of 2013 found that longer deployments, multiple deployments and combat experience didn’t elevate suicide risk. In fact, more than half the troops who had taken their lives had never deployed. A separate, massive Army study found that, while suicide rates for soldiers who had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than doubled between 2004 and 2009, the rate for those who had never spent time in the war zones nearly tripled….
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I thought this was really interesting. I like learning things that run counter to what I THOUGHT I knew.
This reminds me of something I’ve written about a number of times before — the book, On Killing, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. It turned another concept many people hold as true on its ear.
Of course, one reason I liked it is because it gave evidence to support something that I had always suspected was true — that the highest price a country can ask of its soldiers is NOT that they die for their country, but that they KILL for it.
He found that people who were subjected to terrible dangers, but were not expected to kill the enemy, suffered less PTSD than people who were expected to kill. For instance, civilians subjected to things like the Blitz in England suffered less psychological trauma than soldiers in combat situations. I THINK (it’s been awhile since I’ve read it now), he found the same was true of medics — they were under fire, often just as likely to get killed as combat soldiers. But they weren’t expected to shoot back, and therefore didn’t have to deal with the trauma that brought. It was an eye-opener…