Army suicides are running slightly ahead of last year compared to 2012 — up 8% through May — and the potential suicide totals for inactive duty reserves now outnumber those for active duty soldiers — a trend that started in late 2012 and took hold this Spring.
Through May, 52% of total potential suicides for the year involved inactive reserves. Through May 2012, that number was 37%.
The number of inactive reserve potential suicides had exceeded active duty every month since November of 2012, except for January. May’s numbers, released last week, showed a slight edge again for active duty — 12 active duty and 10 inactive reserves.
In aggregate so far this year, there have been 14 fewer total active duty potential suicides reported than at the same point in 2012, and 24 more inactive reserve — a 52% increase.
The chart below shows year-to-date, running totals reported each month.
Given the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan, it is not necessarily surprising that there has been a decline in the number of active duty suicides. Month-by-month totals for all active duty and inactive reserves actually enlisted were not immediately available to compare against the suicide data.
Each month, the Army reports potential suicides for the previous month, broken down by active duty and inactive reserves (Army National Guard and Army Reserves), and by number confirmed and still under investigation. Each release updates numbers from the previous month’s release, and includes a running year-to-date total, as well as annual totals for the previous year. The latter are updated during the first months of the following year to reflect additional confirmations.
Progress in determining whether potential suicides were in fact suicides appears to have come to a standstill in recent months. During March, April and May, no potential suicides among inactive reserves were confirmed as having been suicides and for May, the same was true for active duty incidents. There has not been a streak like that in the past two years; typically, a month in which there are no confirmed suicides is updated the next month to show at least some confirmations.
Asked whether there might be a change in the investigation process or other factors that may be delaying confirmations or closure, a Pentagon spokesman would only say “There is no timeline for closure of investigations.”
The data for May was released nearly a month later than usual by the Pentagon, although a spokesman said the data for June will be released in the last week of this month — generally in the usual time frame.
The chart below shows potential inactive duty reserve suicides (in red) eclipsing active duty (blue).
Sexual assaults have been the most prominent military story in recent months, somewhat eclipsing attention to military suicides, which had been drawing high interest because of large increases — and a key metric that showed more troops were dying of suicide than on the battlefield.
The Google Trends graphic below shows the rising interest on that search engine in military sexual assaults compared to military suicides.
