Peace is Hell, Cont.
Posted Dec. 1, 2008 at 7:59 am by Rick Anderson
Josh Barber
In late August, Army Sgt. Joshua Barber, 31, of Lacey, got in his pickup - a gift from his wife after he returned from Iraq - drove to the parking lot at Madigan Army Medical Center, and shot himself in the head with a revolver. Three weeks earlier he'd asked his wife, "Do you think that God's going to send me to hell for killing innocent people?"
We've long known some war-shocked vets have a harder time adjusting to the battlefront and the home front than others. But now it's an epidemic, as The Olympian points out in a Sunday takeout on military suicides.
Among this soldierly generation's unique stress contributors on the battlefield is e-mail, no less, says Col. Elspeth Ritchie, an Army psychiatrist. "You can get bad news very quickly in theater," Ritchie said. "That can lead to a sense of helplessness and frustration." Major stress factors include multiple deployments, he says, and the inadvertent killing of civilians during combat, the apparent driving force of Josh Barber's demise.The suicide rate for active-duty soldiers, including members of the National Guard and the Reserves, reached an all-time high last year and might be surpassed this year, according to the Army. If this occurs, the suicide rate for active-duty soldiers would top the suicide rate for U.S. civilians for the first time.
Topics: War and Peace
