False Alarms and Needs

"The finding that Canadian Forces suicide rates are lower than the general Canadian population rates is not surprising as CF personnel are a screened employed population and would be expected to have lower rates of suicide as well as lower rates of other medical problems."
March 2013 Surgeon General report

"We have a Hollywood version of soldiers deploying, coming back broken, using drugs, abusing their wives, killing themselves -- that's the depiction of it. That's the stereotype and maybe there are people like that, but we have data that shows the vast majority don't have that."
Col. Rakesh Jetly, Canadian Armed Forces psychiatrist, senior mental health advisor, Surgeon General

Vetting the emotional characteristics of prospective members of the military to ensure that there are no -- or at the very least, as few as possible -- sociopaths, social misfits, psychopaths, troubled souls, to be trained in the military profession of the country's armed forces helps to sideline entry of inappropriate individuals, but cannot entirely prevent their appearance among the ranks of those who represent Canada internationally and at home in militant defence.

There will always be someone in the ranks whose cerebral, and psychological balance may be off-centre to the point where they have a previously-undetected pathology, a malady of the mind making them unfit to be trained in combat duties, and whose eventual return to civil society looses  an unbalanced mind who in some way or another becomes destructive. Either destructive of self through abandonment to drugs and alcohol and eventually suicide, or to other, vulnerable people.

This new study has validated the schooled impression of some observers, while demolishing the received wisdom of the public exacerbated by the hysteria of journalists looking for public attention; a member of the military who has been part of, through active duty, or witness of war tragedies while deployed in war zones runs no greater risk of suicide than any homebound civilian. This statement has resulted from two recent studies; one Canadian the other American.

The number of active military men in the Canadian Forces who have killed themselves between the years 1995 to 2012 was seen to be lower than the suicide rates of Canadian men in the general, civilian population. Data was extracted from the Canadian Forces and Statistics Canada for comparison of suicide rates among currently serving soldiers in the regular Canadian Armed Forces who both had and hadn't been deployed overseas, to those rates among the general population.

The conclusion weighed in distinctly to no relationship between history of deployment and suicide risk. Anecdotes and stereotypes effectively laid to rest. Only, of course, even while they will be cited, they will also be handily overlooked in favour of what people prefer to believe. Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reflects a similar conclusion.

Researchers at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego using data from the National Death Index and the Department of Defense Medical Mortality Registry, along with surveys conducted for the Millennium Cohort Study, brought the American study into line with the Canadian one. The health of thousands of service members was tracked, observing suicide rates in the U.S. military.

Active-duty U.S. military personnel saw suicide rates rise from about 10.3 per 100,000 persons in 2005 to 16.3 per 100,000 persons in 2008. "The findings from this study are not consistent with the assumption that specific deployment-related characteristics, such as length of deployment, numbers of deployments, or combat experiences, are directly associated with increased suicide risk", wrote the authors.

"Instead, the risk factors associated with suicide in this military population are consistent with civilian populations, including male sex and mental disorders." A caution was added by Dr. Zul Merali, president and CEO of the Institute of Mental Health Research at University of Ottawa: "Depression is a huge risk factor in suicide and certainly combat experience does contribute to that. Combat exposure, or a number of exposures, may not directly have an impact (on suicide risk) but that's not to say these things are not going to come back to haunt you later on."

According to Col. Rakesh Jetly, the CF psychiatrist, the Canadian Forces practices one of the most intensive approaches to suicide prevention and investigation worldwide. A team is dispatched to investigate every confirmed suicide of Canadian Forces personnel. Results are examined to help in the determination of trends, and to shape future policy and protocol.

Allan English, specializing in military and veterans' health at Queen's University feels progress has been made in addressing mental illness, though there is still additional work to be done; appropriate resources are required to aid military personnel living with mental illness. "It's fine to have them in theory, but if they're not properly resourced, this could be a contributor toward suicide rates and other bad outcomes."