- U.S. soldiers spoke their minds out, saying they wanted
to go home on their feet and not shrouded in coffins
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- LONDON (IslamOnline.net)
-- In a rate considered abnormally high, the overall suicide rate among
U.S. soldiers in occupied Iraq is running at an average of 13.5 per 100,000
troops, while one in every five soldiers will suffer from chronic distress
in the future, U.S. military psychiatrists said.
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- The real rate might never been known as the U.S. Defense
Department imposes a news blackout on suicides in the chaos-mired country
and refuses to say which of its "non-combat" fatalities have
been self-inflicted, The Guardian reported Sunday, January 25.
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- In terms of figures, at least 22 soldiers have killed
themselves so far in Iraq, which accounts for about 7 percent of all service
deaths in Iraq, said the British daily.
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- One of the suicide cases was Army Specialist Joseph Suell,
who wrote a last letter home to his mother before he killed himself by
an overdose of a painkiller last June.
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- In the letter, Suell complained how he missed his wife
and daughters during a year-long posting to South Korea, Kuwait and finally
to Iraq.
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- The Guardian said that just two suicides were reported
among U.S. personnel during the entire Gulf war in the 1990s.
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- Psychiatrists noted that the majority of the so-called
"psychiatric evacuations" have taken place after May 1, when
U.S. President George W. Bush declared "major combat" effectively
over.
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- Colonel Theodore Nam, chief of in-patient psychiatry
services at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington, said no
psychiatric cases at all were evacuated during the major combat, expecting
high levels of psychiatric casualties.
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- Last month, reports confirmed that more than 600 U.S.
servicemen and women had been evacuated from Iraq for psychological problems.
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- Chronic Stress
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- The chairman of psychiatric services at the Naval Medical
Centre in San Diego, Captain Jennifer Berg, said the Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD) is expected to afflict 20 percent of the servicemen and
women in Iraq.
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- "There is a feeling among troops there that they
have fallen off the public screen. And the longer people are there, the
more we are seeing people come forward with stress reactions," she
stressed.
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- Berg said U.S. soldiers are now suffering from "chronic
stress" due to "a combination of danger, boredom and sleep deprivation,
and the knowledge that they are a long way from home".
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- "In addition, people are no longer sure when or
what the end will be. No one knows when they will be going home,"
she added.
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- The psychiatrists have seen symptoms, including disturbed
sleep, heart palpitations, aggression, irrational anger and feelings of
alienation, and most cases have already ended in suicide, the British daily
said.
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- It recalled that U.S. personnel in occupied Iraq had
undergone psychological suitability checks before going to war.
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- Just nearly one month after May 1, U.S. soldiers spoke
their minds out, saying they wanted on their feet and not shrouded in coffins.
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- http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-01/25/article09.shtml
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