For every soldier killed in battle, 25 veterans commit suicide

For every soldier killed in battle, 25 veterans commit suicide(nytimes.com)

49 points by mitsche 14 years ago | 13 comments

By the numbers:

22.7 million veterans, 92% of whom are male [1]. Based on average suicide rates [2], the statistically expected number of suicides is (19/100000.0) x 22.7e6 x 0.92 + (4.9/100000.0) x 22.7e6 x 0.08 = 4057. So about 2500 suicides seem to be "excess".

This assumes the age distribution of veterans is the same as the US population as a whole.

Since this back of the envelope calculation disagrees widely with the "double to quadruple" number from the article, it would certainly be beneficial if they cited their sources in the same way random blog posts usually do. Newspapers suck.

[1] http://www.va.gov/vetdata/docs/quickfacts/Population-slidesh...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

Retric 14 years ago | |

I have actually worked with these numbers for active duty soldiers and they are high, but not as much as you might think. This article is all about twisting the numbers, and I suspect someone said: "At this rate less than x (? 260) soldiers are going to die. That's good news how can we make this a bad news story and actually sell what we print."

Est: 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year /25 = 260.

Older white men kill them selves significantly more than just about any other group. http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html To actually get accurate numbers you need to adjust for the population and it's demographics which is harder than you might think.

PS: Also, combat stress is not the only factor, the Divorce rate is significantly higher in the military and there is a significant link between Divorce and suicides.

nhebb 14 years ago |

Preliminary figures suggest that being a veteran now roughly doubles one’s risk of suicide. For young men ages 17 to 24, being a veteran almost quadruples the risk of suicide

CBS came up with similar overall rates a few years ago, and they published how they arrived at those figures (which is something you don't see often from broadcast journalists):

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500690_162-3498625.html

GiraffeNecktie 14 years ago |

I just wanted to note that the HN title distorts the information in the article which reads "For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands."

Note the words "this year" and "are dying". It doesn't say that there are 25 times as many suicide deaths as total combat deaths ever, which the HN title would seem to imply. Combat deaths are way down this year due to the withdrawal from Iraq and suicides are quite high.

DanBC 14 years ago |

The UK Office of National Statistics collects some information about suicide and the military.

(http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/release-calendar/index.html...)

ktizo 14 years ago |

In general the global statistics for suicide are worse than those for deaths through other violence, but this is shockingly high.

Jimmie 14 years ago | |

Is it really shocking? I've always been a desk jockey but it's war. War. Killing people, people trying to kill you. Friends dying or being injured, sometimes disabled for life.

I can't imagine I'd handle that well.

ktizo 14 years ago | | |

Normal rate globally is roughly one and a half as many suicides to deaths due to violent crime as far as I am aware, although this is notoriously difficult to measure. Although the figure could also mean that the chance of a soldier being killed in combat is lower than the average homicide rate in the US, combined with a very high suicide rate for the soldier.

25 times just seems ridiculously high. There's around 5000 US soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan, so thats up to 125000 suicides.

wavephorm 14 years ago |

This is not hacker news.

mitsche 14 years ago | |

The guidelines on what to submit on HN are open to interpretation. I posted this in the hopes that other HN members might find it interesting, since it might lead to a better insight into the broad effects of war on society.

Frankly, I didn’t expect it to end up on the front page, but it did. HN more or less regulates itself, so I’m not too worried about submitting an article that bears little or no relation to the IT field, as long as I myself find it to be valuable.

DanBC 14 years ago | |

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

(http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

joshtweed 14 years ago | |

Really? This is a pain point if I have ever seen one. A problem in cased in a , archaic, bureaucratic and inefficient system. DISRUPT this, hacker. If not for the good it would do for a class of suffering humans, do it for the absurd sums of money being tossed into a broken system. Money won't fix this, but they will keep ratcheting up how much is shoveled in. Fix this.

Or build angry birds in zombieville 2.

arvindc 14 years ago | |

But, its a news everyone should know.