Losing the Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide

According to the report, Losing the Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide [2], "Suicide among service members and veterans challenges the health of America’s all-volunteer force." From 2005 to 2010, service members took their own lives at a rate of approximately one every 36 hours. This tragic phenomenon reached new extremes when the Army reported a record-high number of suicides in July 2011 with the deaths of 33 active and reserve component service members reported as suicides. Additionally, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimates 18 veterans die by suicide each day. Yet the true number of veterans who die by suicide, as Harrell and Berglass point out, is unknown. As more American troops return home from war, this issue will require increasingly urgent attention.

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) cordially invites you to the event, Losing the Battle [3], on November 1, 2011, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., to discuss the issue of suicide in the U.S. military with leading experts in the field.  At the event, CNAS will release the policy brief, Losing the Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide, by Dr. Margaret Harrell and Nancy Berglass, which identifies and addresses the challenges associated with service member and veteran suicide. 

The event will feature a discussion on suicide in the military with a distinguished panel of experts, including the report's author Dr. Margaret Harrell [4], CNAS Senior Fellow and Director of the Joining Forces Initiative; General Peter Chiarelli [5], Vice Chief of Staff of the Army; Juliette Kayyem [6], national security columnist for The Boston Globe and a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University; and Dr. Jan Kemp [7], National Mental Health Program Director for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Visit the CNAS LIVE [8] page on November 1 at 4:30 p.m. to watch the webcast of the event. Share your comments and questions in real time on the CNAS LIVE [8] page and on Twitter@CNASdc [9] #military #suicide. 

Copies of Losing the Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide will be available at the event.