Jim Miklaszewski: Suicide Among US Troops Spike!

The suicide rate among US troops has spiked, and military officials studying the spike have found no apparent reason for this developing trend. There were 154 suicides in the first 155 days of the year, nearly one a day. The Army convened its suicide prevention group this week to study the alarming numbers, but could not pinpoint a cause. "There's obvious concern, but we've seen the numbers spike and fall before," a senior military official told NBC News, particularly during the past three years, when the number of suicides among active and reserve forces skyrocketed. Army data suggest soldiers with multiple combat tours are at greater risk of committing suicide, although a substantial proportion of Army suicides are committed by soldiers who never deployed, the Associated Press reported. A joint military-civilian task force, including some of the nation's top mental health experts has been investigating military suicides for a couple of years, military officials said. The group will unveil its findings in 2014, and has yet to pinpoint a specific catalyst. For the previous three years, the number of suicides among active duty and reserve forces has hovered around 300. The unpopular war in Afghanistan is winding down, with the last combat troops scheduled to leave at the end of 2014. But this year has seen record numbers of soldiers being killed by Afghan troops, and there also have been several scandals involving US troop misconduct. The 2012 active-duty suicide total of 154 through June 3 compares to 130 in the same period last year, an 18 percent increase, and it's more than the 136.2 suicides that the Pentagon had projected for this period based on the trend from 2001-2011. This year's January-May total is up 25 percent from two years ago, and is 16 percent ahead of the pace for 2009.