The Burden

When you see so many brutalized, it sometimes catches up with you. I feel very sorry for Kim Ruocco.

Military is battling alarming suicide rate
Failed relationships, tangled finances and legal problems add to stress of war
By SIG CHRISTENSON SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
May 17, 2009, 9:46PM

HANDOUT PHOTO SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Marine Maj. John Ruocco is seen in this 2004 photograph relaxing in his quarters in Anbar Province in Iraq.

Resources

GET HELP

The VAs suicide hot line launched is (800) 273-TALK.

RESOURCES FOR TROUBLED SOLDIERS, FAMILIES

• Veterans experiencing emotional and suicidal crisis, as well as their concerned family members or friends, have immediate access to emergency counseling services 24 hours a day, seven days a week by calling 800-273-TALK (8255).

• For information on suicide warning signs visit www.behavioralhealth.army.mil.

• The Army's Battlemind Training System is a mental health awareness and education program that helps prepare soldiers and their families for the stresses of war and assists with the detection of possible mental health issues before and after deployment. Visit www.battlemind.org.

• Soldiers in crisis should talk to their chaplain, chain of command or a fellow soldier immediately. They may also call Military OneSource at 800-342-9647 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-SUICIDE.

• Call the Wounded Soldier and Family Hotline at 800-984-8523 or e-mail wsfsupport@conus.army.mil.

Annual number of suicides of active-duty soldiers since 2000
The Army's rising suicide rate

Marine Maj. John Ruocco was an AH-1W Super Cobra gunship pilot who seemed to have it all when he learned to fly Air Force jets in San Antonio, but behind the dark brown eyes of a charismatic Elvis impersonator and playful dad was a troubled soul.

That man returned home after 75 Iraq combat missions in 2004.

He struggled with a failed bid to land a civilian job, a desire to do right by his family and memories of fallen comrades before hitting rock bottom in January 2005.

“He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. He felt very down and that’s when I asked him if he felt like killing himself,” his wife Kim recalled.

“He said, ‘I would never do that to you and the boys.’”

A group of Marines came to his hotel room the next day and found Ruocco, 40, hanging by a belt.

He was one 225 U.S. troops, including 28 Marines, to kill himself in 2005.
Suicide numbers soar

At least 109 GIs, including two in the Coast Guard, killed themselves in the first four months of 2009. That’s almost as many members of the military who died during the same period in Iraq and Afghanistan, 128.

Sixty-four of those who committed suicide were in the Army, which is on track to break last year’s record, 143.

Since 2001, 988 soldiers in the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard have killed themselves.

The majority were on active duty. Suicides of four recruiters at the Houston Recruiting Battalion prompted the Army to announce in March several steps to improve support networks and access to mental health care for soldiers assigned to high-pressure recruiting duty.

At least another 997 in the Navy, Navy Reserve, Air Force, Air Force Reserve, Marines and Coast Guard killed themselves in the same period. The total, 1,985, is nearly three times the number of all U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001, now at 683, and is approaching half of the entire military death toll of 4,296 in the Iraq war.

Failed relationships, tangled finances and legal problems, combined with a long war, play roles in suicides. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Saturday that there are no easy answers.

“While factors contributing to this alarming rate are many, I cannot but believe that the pace and frequency of multiple deployments figure in somehow,” he said, adding that he and other military leaders were “alarmed with the increase in suicides, particularly in the Army.”

The concern comes as Army Sgt. John M. Russell, 44, of Sherman, was arrested in last Monday’s shooting deaths of five GIs at a combat stress clinic in Baghdad. Russell’s problems mirrored those of some suicide victims — financial woes, the humiliation of surrendering his rifle and fear of losing his career.

In late April, at Fort Sam Houston, Pfc. Jaynie May Askew, 43, of Scottsdale, Ariz., raised a .45-caliber handgun to her head and fired. She had failed the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians test, flunking out of school.

Askew wasn’t the typical Army victim — a 25- to 26-year-old white NCO — but her apparent use of a handgun was common, as was a fractured relationship. Her parents said she had endured a divorce and recurring child custody disputes. At 41, Askew joined the Army in hopes of finding a new purpose.
Rejection for a job

Ruocco brought his family to Randolph AFB’s T-37 instructor pilot program before the 9/11 attacks. Later, at Vance AFB, Okla., he re-qualified in attack helicopters and also applied to fly for Southwest Airlines. The rejection letter arrived while he fought in Iraq.

“He felt that would solve all of our problems,” Kim Ruocco said of the Southwest job. “He would be able to go to the reserves and take care of his Marines and fly Cobras and have his family in Boston where everybody wanted to be. He would take care of everybody, and that was the big thing.”

But, she added: “He couldn’t figure out how to do that without that job.”

Saving troops like Ruocco remains a vexing problem.

“I don’t want to sound like I know the answers, because we don’t know the answers,” said Army Secretary Pete Geren.

The armed services’ high operational tempo for the past decade definitely is part of the problem, said former VA psychiatrist Dr. Jonathon Shay. The military’s rapid training and deployment cycles short-change troops on the one critical ingredient to good physical and mental health: sleep, he said.

“I’ve been agitating for years the importance of getting truly realistic policy on sleep,” Shay said. “This is a slow slog because it is so contrary to the macho culture and so contrary to the self-sacrificial culture, which sees self-care like sleep as self-indulgence.”

Sleeping in the war zone can be difficult because of mortar and rocket attacks, coalition counterfire and simple nervousness. GIs returning home often complain of troubled sleep.

Every service branch has wrestled with suicides since 2001, but 2007 saw a sharp jump as President George W. Bush sent 28,000 more troops to Iraq to break an insurgency that had mushroomed into civil war. “We are not making any projections about what we think the total number of suicides for 2009 might be, but certainly we are concerned about the number of suicides we have seen in the first quarter of this year,” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said.

The Army’s heavy burden of fighting two wars often requires sending its troops to Iraq and Afghanistan every other year for as long as 15 months.

While GIs say the deployment cycle strain marriages and spark substance abuse, officials said it doesn’t seem to contribute to suicide rates.
Looking for a pattern

“There is no statistical evidence of a greater risk with multiple deployments,” Chiarelli said. “In fact, there were fewer suicides by soldiers with multiple deployments than compared to soldiers with just one deployment.”

Two in every three Army cases were linked to relationship problems; about the same percentage of victims had also deployed to the war zone. Financial problems often were in play.

Army efforts to prevent suicides start with Chiarelli, a one-time Iraq war commander. Training programs have been crafted to help soldiers and their families cope with deployments, post traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, substance abuse and anxiety issues.

But last week’s shooting incident at Camp Liberty in Baghdad underscores the fear that soldiers in a career-oriented, all-volunteer force have of psychological counseling. Ruocco, too, grappled with that problem, probably before leaving for Iraq in 2004.

He slept poorly, turned inward and wouldn’t talk about the war. “He said, ‘I can’t see any beauty or happiness in anything,’ ” his widow said.

sigc@express-news.net