WASHINGTON — Suicides in the Army are expected to reach a new high this year, with 140 suspected cases among active-duty soldiers so far, Army officials said Tuesday.
This will be the fifth year in a row that grim statistic rose despite an aggressive military campaign to tackle the mental-health stigma in the Army. This year’s number already matches that for all of 2008. There were 115 suicides in 2007 and 102 in 2006.
Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, said the military wasn’t seeing any trends that explained the rise. Forty suicides occurred in the first two months of the year. About a third were by soldiers who had never deployed to war zones, and 40 percent of those who committed suicide had seen mental- health specialists.
