Iraq war veteran: Rise in suicides in 2009 'not surprising' David Edwards

Published: Thursday February 5, 2009





Print This Email This Things seem to be getting worse on the internal battlefront.



"One week after the U.S. Army announced record suicide rates among its soldiers last year, the service is worried about a spike in possible suicides in the new year," CNN reports. "The Army said 24 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in January alone -- six times as many as killed themselves in January 2008, according to statistics released Thursday."



The head of a Iraq war veterans group pegged "multiple deployments" as a culprit, and told MSNBC that it shouldn't be surprising, but the military seems to be grasping for answers.



"This is terrifying," Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard told CNN. "We do not know what is going on."



Platoni pointed towards the winter as a possible factor.



"There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold," she said.



CNN reports, "But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers."



MSNBC's Tamron Hall talked to John Soltz, Iraq war veteran and founder of VoteVets.org, about the rise in soldier suicides.



"Unfortunately, I don't find it very surprising," Soltz said, pointing out that out of the approximately 160,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan "twenty thousand of them are medicated on different things like Prozac and Zoloft."



Soltz said that the military was "completely overextended by the Bush administration," and was hopeful that the Obama administration would do a better job in regards to taking care of veterans.



He added that it was important for PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, to be "treated properly, not just give you a pill and send you back to combat."



This video is from MSNBC's News Live, broadcast Feb. 5, 2009.









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