General Chiarelli on Army Suicide Prevention

Ed. Note – the following comment was received via email and is posted in its entirety.

As the Army’s senior leader on suicide prevention, I would like to add a few comments regarding Robert Haddick’s Small Wars Journal post Army’s ‘suicide watch’ report is spineless (SWJ 16 June 2009).

I am glad that we agree on certain points. Congress and the Army should aggressively implement and fund suicide prevention programs. Commanders at all levels must give sincere attention to the issue. We need to prioritize improvements to the welfare of Soldiers and their Families. Attention to suicide, its causes and prevention, are part of force preservation. All of these points appear in the Army Campaign Plan for Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention (ACPHP), which the Army published on April 16, 2009.

The Army’s collection and dissemination of suicide data is intended to be helpful in not only understanding the issue, but also in keeping awareness of the issue at the forefront of our leaders’ minds. It is in no way disrespectful or depersonalizing to Soldiers. It is meant to save lives. You may not realize that senior Army leadership receives a briefing, in painful detail, about every Army suicide so that we can learn lessons on what might be done to prevent future suicides. Those briefings occur on a monthly basis, and I attend every one of them. Let me assure you, each suicide represents an anguishing, heartbreaking tragedy. The details of those briefings include personal information about the deceased Soldier that is subject to privacy laws and considerations for next of kin, and so are not released to the public. But they absolutely reinforce the necessity of being transparent in our discussions about suicide and learning from the cases in order to prevent further suicides.

Also, gauging the scope and nature of the suicide problem absolutely requires data collection, including counting the number of suicides. In October, the Army entered into a memorandum of understanding with the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a longitudinal study to ascertain the factors involved in suicide and to identify effective suicide intervention techniques. Any statistical or epidemiological analysis to assess causation and remedies involves data collection.

I should also mention that the number of suicides is public information that the Army provides to Congress on a monthly basis. Simultaneous press briefings on the subject foster transparency in the Army’s approach to the suicide problem and relay lessons learned that may actually help society as it wrestles with the same problem.

The statistical summary never purported to be more than just that — a summary. We have frequently cited the Army’s suicide rate as you suggested and compared it to the like civilian population. The Army’s rate for 2008 was 20 per 100,000; however, the latest suicide rate for the demographically adjusted civilian population from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) – 19 per 100,000 – dates from 2006, as their statistics lag by two years. It marked the first time the Army’s rate was above the CDC rate. After 2006, no comparison data is yet available from the CDC. It may be that the civilian suicide rate also spiked from 2007 to date. In any case, however one measures the rate, it is unacceptable, and we are committed to bringing it down.

I appreciate your interest about the suicides within the Army, and hope that these comments help address your concerns.

General Peter W. Chiarelli is the Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.