Government Studies

Reading these 3 articles one really has to wonder if they are talking about the same study!

Now I know it is ONLY 17 million dollars and we are ONLY talking about ~300 life’s per year but really!

From the Denver Post:
The U.S. Army will spend $17 million over the next three years trying to figure out why the rate of suicide in the military has outpaced the rate among civilians in the past five years.

The Military Suicide Research Consortium, a project announced Wednesday, will conduct cutting-edge explorations into suicide in the military that can have applications in the civilian population, including Colorado — where the 2009 suicide rate was 18.4 per 100,000, a 20-year high and significantly higher than the military rate.

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From the Clarksville TN the Leaf Chronicle

DENVER — Military medical researchers say their efforts to reverse the rising number of suicides among servicemembers are based on “good ideas,” but they don’t know which prevention programs work and which don’t. They launched a $17 million study Wednesday to find out.

None of the current training programs is evidence-based, said Army Col. Carl Castro, director of the Military Operational Medicine Research Program at Fort Detrick, Md.

“It’s good ideas — experts think that this is what we need to do — but we do not have any evidence that that training actually in fact prevents suicide,” he said.

The new three-year project, funded by the Army, will develop a network of researchers to study multiple aspects of suicide, look at the work of other studies and then compile a database so other researchers and people running suicide-prevention programs can see what is effective.

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From Florida State University Press Release

American soldiers are taking their own lives in the largest numbers since the military began keeping records, and the Department of Defense has enlisted the help of The Florida State University in waging the war against suicide.

A $17 million federal grant has been awarded to FSU and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center to establish the Military Suicide Research Consortium. The consortium is the first of its kind to integrate DOD and civilian efforts in implementing a multidisciplinary research approach to suicide prevention.

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