Where's The Army's Suicide Report?

[G_j]

Where's The Army's Suicide Report?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/022304A.shtml

TruthOut Editor's note: Following the lead story from Newsweek on this page there is another important story revealing that 10% of all hospitalizations resulting from the war in Iraq are mental health related. We encourage you to read down the page so you don't miss both important stories. --sg

  Where's The Army's Suicide Report?
  By T. Trent Gegax

  Newsweek
  Saturday 21 February 2004

Waiting For Answers, Is the Army sandbagging its anticipated 'suicide report'?

  Military members and their families are asking the same question: Where is the Army's so-called suicide report? It's the work of the 12-member Mental Health Advisory Team, commissioned by the top generals in charge of the Iraq war after a string of battlefield suicides. It was initially due out last Thanksgiving. Then it was supposed to be released in early February. Now, there's talk that it's been shelved indefinitely.

  Is the Army deliberately sitting on the report? Perhaps. Or perhaps it's just focusing on other priorities in rebuilding Iraq and preparing to hand back sovereignty to its citizens. No one would argue these aren't massive missions. And, to be sure, the vast majority of soldiers, even those exposed to the most grotesque and horrific combat trauma, may experience only mild post-traumatic stress disorder that requires minor counseling before they bounce back. But evidence suggests that a wave of combat-fatigued soldiers—as many as 20 percent of the 130,000 troops in the field—not seen since the aftermath of the Vietnam War is about to come crashing onto American shores.

  Late last year, publicity about the spate of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq prompted Gen. John Abizaid and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commanders in Iraq, to look for causes. But the report has been complete for months. Yet the colonel in charge of the study can't convince either general to allow him to brief them on the findings, which,

Pentagon sources told NEWSWEEK recently, are not exactly earth-shattering. It says a total of 19 soldiers serving in the Iraq campaign committed suicide in 2003, a number that officials acknowledge is "above average." What's more interesting is what the study ignores. NEWSWEEK has learned that it did not touch on the issue of Lariam, the anti-malaria drug that causes psychotic episodes in a small percentage of people who take it. It had been cited as a potential cause of three prominent murder-suicides at Ft. Bragg, N.C., where soldiers returned from combat in Afghanistan and killed their wives. The Army issued a report dismissing Lariam, but the investigation was cursory and less than conclusive, according to a senior officer at the Army Medical Command in San Antonio, Tex.
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