By: E&P Staff More than virtually any other news outlet in the "mainstream" media, E&P for years has repeatedly reported on the little-covered syndrome of suicides among U.S. troops in Iraq (now in the hundreds)-- or after they return home. Now CBS News has taken a broader look at the shocking trend.
Correspondent Armen Keteyian presented an overview on the CBS "Early Show" today, with more details during the CBS Evening News tonight and more tomorrow.
Here is an except from the CBS summary at www.cbsnews.com
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Some of America's 25 million veterans face their biggest fight when they return home from the battlefield -- when they take on mental illness.
And, a CBS News analysis reveals they lose that battle, and take their own lives, at a clip described by various experts as "stunning" and "alarming," according to Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian. One called it a "hidden epidemic."
He says no one had ever counted just how many suicides there are nationwide among those who had served in the military -- until now.
The five-month CBS News probe, based upon a detailed analysis of data obtained from death records from 2004 and 2005, found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 as non-vets.
A recent Veteran Affairs Department estimate says some 5,000 ex-servicemen and women will commit suicide this year, largely as a result of mental health issues, and Keteyian says, "Our numbers are much higher than that, overall."
He says the numbers in the CBS News study shocked everyone from Sen. Patty Murray (D, Wash.) to veterans' rights advocate Paul Sullivan.
Murray told Keteyian, "That's a lot of young men and women who've gone to fight for us, and come home and found themselves that lost."
Said Sullivan, "This is pulling the fire alarm to say our veterans need help now." ....
Dr. Steve Rathburn is the acting head of the biostatistics department at the University of Georgia. CBS News asked him to run a detailed analysis of the raw numbers that we obtained from state authorities for 2004 and 2005.
It found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets. (Veterans committed suicide at the rate of between 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.)
One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)
"Wow! Those are devastating," said Sullivan.
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