Report: U.S. troop suicides, attempts up

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- A record number of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan have either attempted or succeeded in committing suicide, it was reported Thursday.

A draft of an internal study indicated suicides among active-duty U.S. soldiers in 2007 were at their highest level since the Army began keeping such statistics, The Washington Post reported. In 2007, 121 soldiers killed themselves, nearly 20 percent more than in the previous year.

The number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army was about 2,100, a sixfold jump since the Iraq war began in March 2003, the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan said.

Suicides and attempted suicides "are continuing to rise despite a lot of things were doing now and have been doing," said Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, the Army's top psychiatrist and study author. "We need to improve training and education. We need to improve our capacity to provide behavioral health care."

Common factors found in suicides and attempted suicides included failed personal relationships, legal, financial or job-related problems, and frequency and length of deployments.

The report said the current Army Suicide Prevention Program "was not originally designed for a combat-deployment environment," the Post said.