Does Suicide Count as a Wartime Casualty?
lolfighter
Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
in Discussions
I'll start out by linking <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml" target="_blank">the article.</a> Because there's usually an article. So there it is.
So I got to thinking, and in the end I don't think I can answer this question alone. Due to the nature of war, casualty reports are an important statistic.
Wikipedia attributes the quote <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_damned_lies%2C_and_statistics" target="_blank">"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli" target="_blank">Benjamin Disraeli.</a> I mention this now because it is important to consider regarding statistics. An inaccurate statistic is useless, so if we assume at least that statistics are not inherently lies, then one must certainly strive for the greatest possible accuracy when compiling one.
So given this, I put forward the question: Should casualty reports and statistics for a given conflict include servicemen and -women who commit suicide within a reasonable timeframe after the conflict?* Thoughts and opinions on this, fellows.
<!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->* For that matter, what constitutes a reasonable timeframe? Stuff for a side discussions, perhaps, but please don't let it derail the thread.<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
So I got to thinking, and in the end I don't think I can answer this question alone. Due to the nature of war, casualty reports are an important statistic.
Wikipedia attributes the quote <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_damned_lies%2C_and_statistics" target="_blank">"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli" target="_blank">Benjamin Disraeli.</a> I mention this now because it is important to consider regarding statistics. An inaccurate statistic is useless, so if we assume at least that statistics are not inherently lies, then one must certainly strive for the greatest possible accuracy when compiling one.
So given this, I put forward the question: Should casualty reports and statistics for a given conflict include servicemen and -women who commit suicide within a reasonable timeframe after the conflict?* Thoughts and opinions on this, fellows.
<!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->* For that matter, what constitutes a reasonable timeframe? Stuff for a side discussions, perhaps, but please don't let it derail the thread.<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
Comments
Well, no. The statistics suggest that veterans, as a group, have a higher rate of suicide than civilians. Of course, the one thing that all veterans have in common which separates them from the rest of the population is that they've served in the armed forces during wartime. Whilst it would be speculation to suggest that an individual suicide is a direct result of having served in a war (and thus possibly a wartime casualty), if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, there <b>is</b> an apparent link.
That's like saying there's no way to verify that a soldier dying of heat stroke in Iraq was related to the war. Sure, you can die of heat stroke anywhere, but that soldier would never have been in Iraq, and would never have overheated and died, without the war in the first place. The suicides are the same thing. Obviously people, including soldiers, commit suicide for reasons that aren't directly related to the war, but if the war is the cause, directly or indirectly, of an increasing number of suicides, then this is one of the many factors people would consider in deciding whether or not they support the war. To ignore these suicides is disingenuous, dishonest, and a disservice to our armed forces, as it understates the sacrifices they go through for no reason other than to make a war more popular with the public.
Such as:
-Closeness of the basic unit (how big of friends the soldiers are with each other, on average)
-Casualties per day for the average unit, due to combat, exposure, etc
-Average combat environment (the fields of WWI are radically different from those of Vietnam, and both are very different from Iraq)
-Other factors regarding morale (average days between a hot meal/hot shower, rotation rates in and out of the front lines, effectiveness of the postal system and how bad things are being censored in mail, average acceptance of the junior officers, etc, etc, etc)
Those are just kinda a few things. I guess the point is that answer the question of "normal" suicide rate is not only grim, but quite hard. However, if you could establish such a number, it could be useful, when compared to the current number, in deciding which of the above factors are the cause of the higher rates, I suppose.
My answer to lolfighter's original question would be: If the suicide rate is higher than what is "normal" for combat operations, then yes, those deaths should be counted as additional losses. By the same token, maybe a lower rate than the "normal" could represent "negative" casualties?
Still, it seems to me that a system like this could be abused either way.
But working with a baseline presents other problems. Let's assume that we find the suicide rate to be twice as high in wartime as otherwise. It's simple to say that we include every second suicide in the statistic, but WHO exactly do we include? It's hardly feasible to launch a large-scale investigation into every veteran suicide to figure out the exact motive, so what do we do when both Pvt. Jenkins and Sgt. Hibblies commit suicide two weeks after they come home from the Himalayan Hijinks? Toss a coin to see which one gets declared a casualty and which one doesn't?
But even if we decide to include suicides in the casualty figures, there's still the issue of the time-frame. A soldier who commits suicide weeks after returning from the current Iraq conflict? A soldier who returned in 2004? A veteran of the first gulf war? A vietnam veteran? Where's the line? This might ultimately prove a far greater problem than establishing the baseline.
However, this means that we must come to accept that the official casualty reports (created by means of "counting the bodies" of those who come to a violent end in the conflict) are not accurate, merely the least inaccurate that we have, and that an accurate casualty report would be higher.
Am I disputing that war sends soldiers home with "hidden" injuries that may not show up for years? No, but the casualty list must relate to deaths in the war zone.
Oh, but I already agreed to that. I plead no contest. However:
<!--quoteo(post=1661834:date=Nov 26 2007, 07:08 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lolfighter @ Nov 26 2007, 07:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1661834"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[...]this means that we must come to accept that the official casualty reports (created by means of "counting the bodies" of those who come to a violent end in the conflict) are not accurate, merely the least inaccurate that we have, and that an accurate casualty report would be higher.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Really, that's my conclusion, and I'm prepared to walk away with that. I got what I came for, so to speak.
Had: trouble with the issue of suicides among veterans and how this relates to casualty statistics.
Got: clarity.
lolf already touched on this actually.
You need to work from a baseline of "Suicides per capita of soldiers during peace".
Honestly, I think that the question is really bloody interesting, I also think lolf has the right of it:
we are not likely to be able to really figure the answer out.
Just some random ideas:
Suicide rate of veterans (I assume the term veteran implies they fought, or were at least in a combat situation) is higher then civilians.
What could lead to this?
Post Traumatic Stress is the first thing every one is likely to think of (They saw some really horrible things, and did possibly did things none of us would ever want to do).
However I can also think of a second possible factor:
Veterans are people who HAVE been trained to kill, have been trained to act decisively, and who know how weapons work. So here we have a group that is NOT comparable to civilians when it comes to the matter of dealing death.
Are Suicide ATTEMPTS higher for Veterans then for civilians? After all, If some one who KNOWS what they are doing decides to end their life, they are less likely to bungle it then some one who doesn't (up the street, not around the block, etc)
How about tossing in soldiers that never saw combat (now we have a group that has been trained for all these things, but never had to employ them). Do these statistics change?
On a quick note about Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics:
Statistics never lie, and statistics are never wrong, HOWEVER:
People can lie VERY well with Statistics, and DESCRIPTIONS of statistics can be very wrong.
Something could be labeled as "Suicides per 1,000 Veterans". However, the definition of Veteran could GREATLY change what those stats mean. HOW the stats were collected is important in the definition. Was this a random sampling? Was it simply straight up recording from army database? etc etc etc.
get it? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Exactly!
Just showing statistics that have a correlation between Group A and Action B does NOT SHOW CAUSATION.
You can not ACTUALLY prove causation until you create an experiment where you control EVERY variable available, unfortunately, you can't do that. However we can get closer and closer to that goal. This is also why an experiment that is non-repeatable is generally agreed to be debunked.
sorry, I think in the scientific method and it bugs me when I see people taking a stat and then just assuming the first conclusion they come up with (or more often are GIVEN).
/me continues to make himself unpopular.
Thansal, I agree that the conclusion is somewhat fallacious in that it equates correlation with causation, but this isn't entirely true. For example, if those who sign up for military service are predisposed to suicide then you would expect a higher rate of suicide during peace time too. You should be able to control for that variable by contrasting statistics for war and peace time. Obviously, this doesn't trump the basic problem with correlation, but I think for such serious issues as 17 suicides a day ( with data from only 45 states included ) you need to act to some degree. Perhaps better screening is needed, but I don't think it will work. We have one of the highest rates of suicide in Europe here in Ireland and the everlasting problem is diagnosing risk. Many people suffer in silence, and many people who commit suicide live perfectly normal lives. I wouldn't go out and say that the military should list the suicide victims as war causalities, but the public at large need to be aware of this strong correlation and for that to happen then a lot more study is needed.
If you feel there's a strong correlation between armed forces and suicide risk, AND there's an increase in suicides during this same time frame, then I'm inclined to believe this is related to two factors (at least in the U.S.): less stringent screening policies for recruits, and the major decrease in disciplinary action of soldiers due to civil rights being practiced. Just like schools turning to crap because teaches and administration can't use corporal punishment anymore, so is the U.S. armed forces raising a bunch of damn candy asses. Did you see this alarming suicide rate during the Vietnam conflict? I think not.
depot, you are making those statements up out of whole cloth. IF you want to argue that, then pull up suicide figures relating to peace time "now" peace time circa Vietnam, war time now, and war time in Vietnam. Otherwise you are just saying "I don't think this exists, there for it doesn't". And best would of course be to have the rates right around the change off of corporal punishment (or what ever you are arguing).
Are suicides higher for Veterans? seems like it, what do we do to fix it? I dono.
I don't think screening is the answer, as I doubt we could screen for something that happens in the future.
What I like the idea of is to improve the VA's ability to keep in touch with veterans. I mean, one way to fix the problem is to force mental health evaluations on veterans at regular intervals. This, of course, is is INCREDIBLY intrusive, and I don't know if veterans would stand for it. So something else would have to be implemented.
Possibly making services readily (and VERY easily) available to veterans, and training them about these dangers before (or shortly after) they are released.
Oh, and puzl, I was just really pointing out that people tend to automatically jump on an idea and present it as fact. Something I don't like. I would also point out that we don't have a per capita study of 3 key groups:
Active duty soldiers in a combat environment
Active duty soldiers in a non combat environment
Former soldiers who never saw combat.
From there we would have a better idea if it is combat that is destroying them, or some other factor. Obviously we will NOT be getting this data, and should act on what we do have (Veterans are killing them selves, thus we must help them). I guess that is what I forgot to say before. You act with the data you have, but you can't say that "This is SO" with out more data.
I read a book a while ago called "On Killing" by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. It dealt mostly with the training of soldiers to kill as well as the PSD suffered by many as a result. The book was written in 1995, before the Afghani and Iraqi war but after the Gulf war. I dug it out of my bookself and haven't been able to find his numbers on suicides, but I remember them being in here. I did find something relevant to <b>Depot</b>'s current talking point. <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->During World War II more than 800,000 men were classified 4-F(unfit for military service) due to psychiatric reasons. Despite this effort to weed out those mentally and emotionally unfit for combat, America's armed forces lost an aditional 504,000 men from the fighting effort because of psychiatric collapse
...
In the brief 1973 Arab-Israeli War, almost a third of all Israeli casualties were due to psychiatric causes, and the same seems to have been true among the opposing Egyptian forces.
...
Swank and Marchand's much-cited World War II study determined that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98 percent of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties of one kind or another. Swank and Marchand also found a common trait among the 2 percent who are able to endure sustained combat: a predisposition toward "aggressive psychopathic personalities."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think I just found the bit related to suicide in the index. Since I'm typing this out by hand I'll post this while I reread the relevant sections. A little on the Lt. Col. for those interested: he's a former army Ranger and paratrooper. He taught psychology as West Point and currently[at the time this book was written] is the Professor of Military Science at Arkansas State University.
The main differences in Vietnam:
-the enemy was often in civilian clothes
-soldiers were usually a replacement in a unit(in WWII they kept units together, sent them home together)
-the average age of the soldiers was lower(on both sides)
-there was no safe area to fall back to so soldiers always had to be alert
-there was much less support for returning veterans politically and among the general populous
My thoughts: I think it is likely that many currently enlisted men/women did not have a good support structure when they left for the military, maybe hoping to find one there. These people should still be counted as wartime casualties because the war was a major contributing factor to their death.
His post is about the increase in PTSD among Vietnam War veterans compared to veterans of the Korean War and Second World War, as well as possible reasons for that, as taken from the book he mentioned.
If your response was to Depot, who is, I think, the only one to call anyone "candy ass," it might have been prudent to indicate that.
Vietnam veterans are more likely to commit suicide than the average U.S. citizen but less likely to commit suicide than an Iraqi vet. The reference to candy asses was relative and stated in the present tense. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
For the record: Saying that Schools went to crap because Corporal punishment wasn't used isn't exactly a fact, considering at that same time the Teacher's Union was gaining major popularity, and we know what a huge success that's been for Education.
As to my stance on the topic at hand: No they should not be considered casualties, but it *should* be carefully studied by our Military Forces. Casualties I've always seen as from 100% direct causes of the war- a bullet wound, for example. I wouldn't even consider, necessarily, someone stepping on a nail and dying of Tetnis while in Iraq a Casualty, though we may in our statistics.
BUT, I'd still take notice of the amount of Tetnis deaths and see what we could do to prevent it- preventing suicide for this though is a big issue. I'd say one of the main things is, is that many are doing it once they are back home.
This leads me to wonder: Could it have to do with post-war opportunities? I think we can all agree that the GI Bill secured so many great opportunities for our WW2 vets that it was insane, and the fact that the current system barely benefits being a Veteran is pretty ridiculous.
Sure, and at the same time Social Services clamped down on "child abuse" regarding parents who spanked their children. Between the schools and the parents getting in trouble for corporal punishment, and army recruits having similar protection, our society is in the mess that it's in.
And yeah, I'm saying this is directly related to soldiers being thrown into combat and how they relate to it. It's all about upbringing.
This leads me to wonder: Could it have to do with post-war opportunities? I think we can all agree that the GI Bill secured so many great opportunities for our WW2 vets that it was insane, and the fact that the current system barely benefits being a Veteran is pretty ridiculous.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Save us the trouble and document this, will you? I know I received thousands of dollars when I got discharged (don't recall the exact amount). What do they get now?
And yeah, I'm saying this is directly related to soldiers being thrown into combat and how they relate to it. It's all about upbringing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Frankly, that's a non-sequitur. I'd love if you'd back your opinion up with further arguments, though this isn't the proper thread for it. I suggest making a new thread with your thoughts and opinions, preferably in the Discussions forum, then dumping a link to it in here. That'll lend credibility to your stance and allow us to debate it without derailing this thread.
In general, Depot just posts random thoughts that support his favoured interpretation. He never posts anything remotely resembling evidence. Old Wives tales do not make for good scientific research.
You may as well blame microwave ovens for the trends Depot blames on Corporal punishment, as they both correlate equally with the problems he perceives in science.
This isn't to say that corporal punishment had no positive influence on individuals, but we need to be careful about correlating changes in society with random unconnected changes in behaviour.
Let me ask you Depot, how can you be sure that the increase in suicide is not just simply because these veterans have had a much more traumatic experience?