Last year's Army suicide rate was the highest since the current system of record keeping began in 1980, and unfortunately, it has more than doubled since 9/11. The Marine Corps recently disclosed that they had more losses to suicide than to combat last year. Although many of those who took their own lives had not been deployed and weren't scheduled to deploy, the long war on terror continued to take a toll.
An Air Force Major returned from a 4 month long deployment last Christmas to find that he was being involuntarily separated from the service. He subsequently took his own life. A teenager whose father was deployed was the subject of bullying at his school, in part because he was a military "brat." He too committed suicide.
An Army wife with two children and a deployed husband dressed the family in their Sunday best, loaded them in the car, and started the engine in a closed garage, killing them all. An Air Force wife whose husband was deployed murdered both of her teenage children. These alarming statistics clearly manifest the incredible stresses on our military and their families.
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