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The Army confirmed in a Thursday report that 99 soldiers committed suicide last year, the highest number in a single year since 1991.

The figures also showed that of the 44 soldiers who have so far committed suicide in 2007, 17 were in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Although occupational issues may have contributed to some of the suicides, the report said soldiers also suffered from failed relationships and legal and financial trouble. The overall suicide rate for soldiers in 2006 was 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers, up from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2005 and 10.8 per 100,000 in 2004.

The military has stepped up mental health efforts in response to the suicide rate, which has risen steadily since shortly after the war in Iraq began. New initiatives include an increase in the number of caregivers assigned to units deployed for more than six months and commander training in suicide intervention.

Soldiers also will be encouraged to associate with battle buddies and attend relationship building seminars, as part of a movement to decrease the stigma of requesting mental health care.

Some veterans' advocates say the military's efforts still are inadequate.

"They're not educating people about suicide," said Susan Avila-Smith, director of Women Organizing Women, a group that counsels female military personnel who have been victims of sexual assault. Avila-Smith, who worked with the military as a Chinese linguist, said she was posted at a barracks with a high suicide rate, but didn't know it at the time.

"They brush the statistics under the rug," she said, "so I didn't realize [depression or post-traumatic stress] could happen to me, to the guy next to me." She also said post-traumatic stress disorder "isn't a mental illness," but rather "a normal response to the extreme pressures soldiers face."

Avila-Smith said numerous battlefield stresses, including disillusionment with the military's methods, might contribute to an active duty soldier's decision to commit suicide. "[Commanders] say 'Here's the rules,' but you turn around and they're not playing by the rules and that's scary because your reality is different and you don't know who to trust," she said.

It's difficult for soldiers to confide in chaplains, who are traditionally appointed as counselors to active personnel, if soldiers suspect the chaplains might report comments back to their superiors, Avila-Smith added.

She also noted that women soldiers, who are technically forbidden from serving on the front lines, have trouble securing treatment. "[Doctors] don't recognize that women have been in combat but they have, driving Humvees," she said.

Recruitment pressures have forced the Army to extend tours of duty or increase the number of tours so soldiers return to the field after brief stays at home, also contributing to stress.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr. acknowledged in a Tuesday speech at the National Press Club that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have strained the Army's resources, including those for mental health.

"Soldiers, families, support systems and equipment are stretched and stressed by the demands of repeated deployments and insufficient recovery time," Casey said. "Army support systems -- for example, health care, education systems and family support systems -- were designed for the pre-9/11 peacetime Army, and we need to expand those and adapt them to sustain an Army at war."

COMMENTS

• I would like to consider this sad experience of soldiers and veterans committing suicide has happened before, and I would suggest, for similar reasons. History is repeating itself. The vets from the war in Viet Nam (the correct spelling)realized too late our President created a war based on a lie. The moral reasoning for the war, and the experience was more than many could bear. Added to that was the emtional distance from loved ones and the ability for many to reintigrate into a society which denied the experience. The result was the loss of self-worth, and ultimately, taking of their own lives. Todays soldiers in Iraq are realizing this was is also a lie by (in my belief) a potentially fraudulent government. The resulting suicides are an indicator the moral threshold of the soldier's has been breached. Our soldiers cannot withstand the moral pain they experience, fighting a war which includes the wholesale killing of innocent people, such as what happened in Viet Nam. They know the morality of this war is wrong, created by psychopathic personalities, and run by a military which will do everything in it's power to create a best face in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For more than six years, the Army has discharged more than 22,500 soldiers, after their deployment, on Chaper 5-13, for personality disorders. This way, the soldier can never file with the VA for PTSD, keeping the VA budget down, and the issue of PTSD never reaches corporate media or the public's concern. From Mid-September to late October 2007, four suicides were brought to my attention from those closly associated with the events. America is suffereing from Post Traumatic Stress Denial. I hope people like Ms. Avila-Smith and others can help Americans recall their senses, and win their cases. Ted Engelmann Posted January 7, 2008 2:31 AM
• It is hard to understand depression that makes you want to end your life let alone for any of us civilians to understand a soldier who comes home with a war in his or her head that does not disappear with time. I made a film called The Ground Truth about soldiers coming home that included the suicide story of Jeffrey Lucey. I met his parents two months after he hung himself in their basement and I have looked for ways to get this issue out effectively ever since. I am stunned that all Americans and soldiers who truly live by the rule of leaving no one behind and who stick together better than most, will allow our military and our government to not count many suicides as casualties of war if one has served. Many families fight and get their deceased benefits so there is some recognition but it comes only with effort and often humiliation. To count these lives would be to admit the ultimate truth - that some can not mentally survive war- something you are trained and told you can do. How frightening that thousands and thousands and thousands have come back from many wars and silently proven millions of dollars of training wrong. Except they don't spend millions training you for weeks and months on how to live and be happy with a mind full of war once you are alone again; they train you to kill and survive. I think the military knows this simply by that ridiculous questioniare they give you when your walking out the door. Not acknowledging suicide deaths is like having to prove you are innocent when war has declared you guilty. The lack of care that many are seeing and the lack of conviction about this war are leaving not all, but some, lost. It is much easier to blame the individual when they are gone than to stand up to the living. We know how strong our military is. It would be good to spend less time worrying about proving how strong our military is and more time thinking deeply about the best way to use all that strength to hold on to those we cared so much for when they were brght and shiny - before they were hard to be with - all I hear is "better to fight over there than here" - these suicides are here. And they are not leaving any time soon. patricia foulkrod Posted November 18, 2007 7:46 PM
• Contrary to another comment posted, the Army chaplains are only able to do as much as the command will allow. I personally have had serious financial issues that neither the state courts in my home town will change, nor the Army assist me to solve this problem. They have interfered in my endeavors to position myself to solve these problems, and not informed me of proper ways to solve them. Because of the need for as many of us to deploy as possible, it was far to easy to overlook the fact that the financial assistance programs have only assisted me once. They have granted me emergency loans but these are only a short term solution to a long term problem. I will admit, I did join the Army for basically 2 reasons, one was I thought my home state would see it as a respectable employment(I was wrong), and two, I chose the job in the military I had been told had the highest chance of being killed. I am not suicidal, but if I could bring myself to the selfish act, I would have done it by now. Point being that when the signs are there for them to see, they ignore or brush them aside to accomplish mission first...like we are taught. Phillip Posted October 13, 2007 12:53 PM