Suicide rates soar for US war veterans

Preliminary data from the Veterans Affairs (VA) Department indicated on Monday that about 18 veterans commit suicide every day.

Most of the veterans in the 18-29 age group had served in the Iraq or Afghanistan war zones.

In 2005, the rate per 100,000 veterans among men aged 18-29 was 44.99, compared with 56.77 in 2007.

Addressing a suicide prevention conference in Washington on Monday, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki acknowledged that his agency needed to do a better job of understanding what led to each suicide.

Mr Shinseki, himself a Vietnam veteran, said that of the more than 30,000 suicides each year in the US, about 20 per cent were committed by military veterans.

He called for more stringent protocols to be put into place at VA facilities about how to handle a potentially suicidal veteran.

"Emotional wounds are just as common as physical injuries, but more difficult to spot, which makes suicide prevention such a challenge," Mr Shinseki observed.

"You can splint and patch physical wounds, but emotional wounds don't lend themselves to such fixes.

"Why do we know so much about suicides but still know so little about how to prevent them?" Mr Shinseki asked.

"Simple question, but we continue to be challenged."

Assistant Defence Secretary for Health Affairs Ellen Embrey observed that every life lost to suicide "is both a personal tragedy and a tragedy to society - whether civilian or military.

"It's also a tragedy because, for all of our sophisticated knowledge, we still do not know all there is to know about preventing these needless deaths from occurring," Ms Embrey went on.

She concluded that the nation owed veterans "a debt of gratitude, we owe them the very best we can give them and we are committed to reducing the burden of suicide."

In recent years, the VA has hired thousands of new mental health professionals and established a suicide hot line credited with "rescues" of nearly 6,000 veterans and military members in distress.