The military may be required to start tracking suicides by job assignments

MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. - True there sir.

Those would be likely candidates MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D..

I think the numbers would be more based on peacetime v wartime. Right now an infantryman lives training for war and to meet Army requirements, really not a bad life. Then you have career fields that have active jobs both in garrison and war. My money would be with the MPs as in garrison many have to show 1-2 hours before shift to draw weapons, work 8-10 hours, return weapons, and PT. Medical have long hours and have to meet both professional medical standards and Army standards. I often would do my three 12hr shifts and on my days off do the range, PT test, and any other Army requirement to stay a soldier. MPs and medical work 24/7/365 in garrison or at war, infantry mostly banker hours while in garrison. I am not down playing what grunts do, it is hell but what they see during war and what life in peacetime are very different worlds.

My guess is that the numbers will be about the same across the board, but they will skew by timeline.

The "soft" MOSs will have a higher incidence during a deployment window. I would guess from about 2 months prior to about 1 year after.

The "grunt" MOSs will likely have a higher rate years later.

In my experience, the grunts are much more likely to be too "in the moment" during the actual deployment. They are suffering trauma, but not EXPERIENCING it, yet. They ain't got time for that shit. But once things wind down, they complete post-deployment, the adrenalin fades. Then they have time to actually PROCESS all the stuff they did, they saw, they experienced. And that is when it starts to get real. And as time goes on, that heaviness just gets heavier, as they are able to process more and more.

By contrast, the "soft" MOSs aren't geared for combat. Their garrison training is about analyzing bits of data or PMCS or fixing radios. They aren't *as* prepared for making real-world decisions about whether a piece of Intel is credible - and the implications of that decision to the guys going through the door. Or about what it means if the logistics convoy is delayed by a day. Or what happens when a poor PMCS causes a HMMWV to breakdown in the kill zone. But, these folks are also not "in the shit" everyday. So they have time today to think about what happened yesterday. And if not today, them tomorrow, or next week at the latest. Whether what happened yesterday was someone living or dying based on their work, was them having to ACTUALLY pull the trigger, or seeing a battle buddy get wounded or die. They have time to process while still downrange.


Just my guess, based on living both garrison and deployed life on both sides of the coin. And I will say that starting off a grunt made deployed life WAY easier to handle and process when I was a POG.

That’s a very interesting piece of data. I suspect that job loss due to military status was a part of the reason. For a
while there employers wouldn’t hire back soldiers who deployed. That’s why employers needed to be educated about USERRA which makes this behavior illegal.

LTC Elaine Gullotta During the training it was mentioned they thought the higher rates were because Guard/Reserve Soldiers et al, went back home and went back to a weekend a month and didn't see other unit members until the next drill. Whereas the active duty folks had others around them who had the same experiences and they could talk with each other.