Military needs to monitor post-combat suicides, panel told By Juliet O'Neill Ottawa Citizen January 29 2010
OTTAWA — Canadians should be wary of a grim trend in the United States where all military suicides outnumber combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, a top mental health expert said Thursday.
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Merali said while more than 4,500 U.S. military personnel have died in combat since the beginning of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, "a larger number are falling when they come back home through suicide."
At a recent U.S. suicide prevention conference, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said 20 per cent of the country's 30,000 suicides each year are acts by veterans of the current operation and previous wars — or 6,000 deaths.