Suicides, attempts in the Army rise again

The increases occurred despite a host of efforts to improve the mental health of a force that has been stressed by lengthy and repeated deployments to the longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the most deadly year yet in the now 6-year-old conflict in Afghanistan.

"We have been perturbed by the rise despite all of our efforts," said Colonel Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.

Those efforts include more training and education programs, the hiring of more mental health professionals, and the addition of screening programs launched after a succession of studies found the military's peacetime healthcare system overwhelmed by troops coming home from the two foreign wars.

The preliminary figures on 2007 show that among the active duty soldiers and the National Guard and Reserve troops that have been activated, there were 89 confirmed suicides and 32 deaths that are suspected suicides but still under investigation.

Less than a third of the suicides - about 34 - happened during deployments in Iraq. That compared with 27 in Iraq the previous year. Four were confirmed in Afghanistan compared with three there in 2006.

The total of 121, if all are confirmed, would be more than double the 52 reported in 2001, before the Sept. 11 attacks prompted the Bush administration to launch its counterterror war. The toll was 87 by 2005 and 102 in 2006.