War Stress Pushing Army Suicides Higher

August 16, 2007 - 7:27pm
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Repeated and ever-longer war-zone tours are putting increasing pressure on military families, the Army said Thursday, helping push soldier suicides to a record rate.

There were 99 Army suicides last year _ nearly half of them soldiers who hadn't reached their 25th birthdays, about a third of them serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general, told a Pentagon press conference that the primary reason for suicide is "failed intimate relationships, failed marriages."

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