Military Suicides

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Have you ever heard about how bad military suicides are (or seen it played as a cliché in the movies)?

While it's a serious problem, and we should care for all people under mental distress, I had looked up the context.

  • The military has a suicide rate of 30 per 100K, which means a rate of .03% -- or 99.97% are not suicidal.
  • That number is roughly double national averages (2x), which isn't good.
  • But averages go up with low-income, youth, travel/unstable home, and stressful professions.

Let's pretend there was a journalist out there to give you context of what that means compared to other groups:

  • 1.9x for Doctors or Marine Engineers
  • 1.7x Dentists and 1.6 Veterinarians
  • and 1.5x Finance workers.
  • For White Women, physicians were 2.8x, sales was 2.4x, and Police was 2x national averages.
  • For black males, being a detective in the police was 2.5x more likely suicide far exceeds the military.
  • For Black Women, protective service was 2.8x. And sales supervisor or packing machine operators were roughly equal to military suicide rates at 2x.

So when you hear of military suicides, this isn't to say you shouldn't care. It's an issue that we should try to address. But we should also not let it play into this "crazy" soldier syndrome that the media is trying to sell us. They're less crazy as a group than your doctor, despite having a more stressful job.