Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
That can be said of all veterans, who selflessly are willing to pay the ultimate price for their country. But what happens to them after service ends and they come home?
Some come home to happy families and resume normal lives.
Some come home to jobs and prosperity.
Still others come home to loneliness, depression and post traumatic stress.For those who come home to these aforementioned life can devastatingly tough. And unfortunately, can lead to suicide.
The U.S. military finished 2018 with a troubling, sad statistic: It experienced the highest number of suicides among active-duty personnel in at least six years. It is often reported that one soldier commits suicide every 65 minutes.
A total of 321 active-duty members took their lives during the year, including 57Marines, 68 sailors, 58 airmen, and 138 soldiers.
The deaths equal the total number of active-duty personnel who died by suicide in 2012, the record since the services began closely tracking the issue in 2001.
Suicide continues to present a challenge to the Pentagon and the military services, which have instituted numerous programs to save lives, raise awareness and promote prevention.Marine CorpsCommandant Gen. Robert Neller, in his 2019 guidance to Marines released Friday, urged them to consider the lasting impact that a “permanent solution to a temporary problem” can have.
According to the latest statictics from the Department of Defense in 2016, the soldier suicide rate across all the military services was 21.1 deaths per 100,000 active-duty service members.
Rates for the individual services that year were:
- 19.4 per 100,000, based on 61 deaths, for the Air Force;
- 26.7 per 100,000, based on 127 deaths, for the Army;
- 15.3 per 100,000 based on 50 deaths, for the Navy;
- and 21 per 100,000, based on 37 deaths, for the Marine Corps.
Traders Magazine, including its Army Dad editor, John D’Antona Jr, proudly salutes and supports all veterans.
