Generals Find Suicide a Frustrating Enemy

From The Washington Post:

As Numbers Continue to Climb, Top Officers Meet Monthly to Look for Answers

It was just past midnight in Afghanistan when Brig. Gen. Mark Milley appeared on the video screen in the Pentagon conference room to brief some of the Army's top generals on a sobering development: his unit's most recent confirmed suicide.

A 19-year-old private, working a night shift at his base, had shot himself a few weeks earlier. "There was no indication that he would harm himself, he had not been seen by the chaplain, no intimate relationships," Milley said, running through warning signs.

In the Pentagon, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff, homed in on one detail. The soldier worked a job that often entailed long, solitary hours. In scouring the Army's suicide statistics, Chiarelli had noticed a slight suicide increase among those who worked such positions. Milley said that going forward none of the 20,000 soldiers under his command would routinely work by themselves.

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My Comment: I cannot imagine what goes through a person's mind when he/she is contemplating suicide. My Godfather was a World War 2 vet who committed suicide 18 years after the event. The official record was that he shot himself by playing Russian roulette .... but everyone knew that it was because of his experience in the the war that made him take his life. This tells me that the problems of Iraq and Afghanistan .... and who knows where else .... these problems will be with us for a very very long time.