ARMY SUICIDE RATE ONE EVERY 10 DAYS Stressed soldiers in grip of epidemic
A SUICIDE epidemic is hitting serving soldiers and veterans at the rate of one every 10 days, the Daily Star Sunday can reveal.
More than 20 serving and former members of the armed forces have killed themselves this year.
The current suicide rate was described by one senior officer as the worst in living memory and has prompted calls for an inquiry by veteran campaigners.
Many of those who take their lives are suffering from either depression or post traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Earlier this year Private Reece Miller shot himself in the head in front of his comrades just hours after arriving in Estonia for a Nato mission.
The 28-year-old father was a member of the Yorkshire Regiment. He shot himself with his SA-80 A2 assault rifle while taking part in a range training session four weeks ago. Colleagues were said to be stunned and shocked by Pte Miller’s death who was said by family friends to have no reason to take his own life.
The Afghan War veteran was married with children. Three other serving military personnel have also died recently.
Marine Alex Tostevin, 28, a member of the Special Boat Service, was found dead inside his top secret base at Poole in Dorset. He is believed to have hanged himself. Highlander Alistair McLeish was a 19-year-old member of the Royal Regiment of Scotland who was found dead inside his barracks in Catterick three weeks ago and a day before Pte Miller died in Estonia. And Jordan Corcoran, 28, was found dead after he went missing from his Weeton Barracks in Lancashire earlier this month. Their deaths follow those of six former members of the Royal Marines, who were all veterans of either Iraq and Afghanistan and were suffering from PTSD when they died. The commandos all died within six weeks of each other and their deaths have caused questions to be asked at the highest levels about the treatment of mentally ill veterans.
The death of SBS Marine Tostevin is said to have been particularly worrying for the Ministry of Defence. The SBS marine was found dead inside the unit’s headquarters in April.
He had only been a member of the elite unit for about a year. He was awarded a Mention In Dispatches in Afghanistan after continuing to fire his machine gun in Sangin, Helmand Province, even after he had been shot in the head.
His heroic actions in July 2010 allowed two other British troops who had been pinned down by Taliban gunmen to make their escape and his citation revealed he “remained steadfast at his sentry position”.
Ex-Staff Sergeant Trevor “Speedy” Coult, who won the Military Cross while serving with the Royal Irish Regiment in Iraq called on the MoD to start treating veterans’ suicide seriously.
He told the Daily Star Sunday: “The MoD needs to stop pretending that suicide among serving and former members of the armed services is not a problem.
“When you have a service member dying by his own hand every 10 days you have got a problem. The MoD needs to urgently conduct a detail investigation to try and find out why troops suffering from PTSD are taking their lives in such large numbers.”
A spokesman for the MOD said: “Any suicide is a tragedy and we take each case extremely seriously. Help is available for serving personnel and veterans through the 24-hour mental health helplines and we are spending over £20million a year on mental health services.”