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suicide
Two More Israeli Soldiers Kill Themselves Amid Crisis Driven by Horrors of Genocide
"As humans," explained one psychologist, "we can be both victims and perpetrators."
Jul 29, 2026
Two more Israeli soldiers killed themselves over the past two days, bringing renewed scrutiny to what experts say is a worsening mental health emergency inside the Israel Defense Forces during 33 months of genocidal war on Gaza and enduring stigma around seeking treatment.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, two female IDF troops—a combat soldier and an intelligence officer—died by suicide this week. Israeli Military Police said they are investigating both deaths, which bring the number of active duty IDF troops who have killed themselves this year to at least 16. Haaretz said that at least nine former IDF soldiers have also committed suicide after completing their military service in 2026.
The latest deaths underscore what military officials, mental health professionals, and veterans have increasingly described as one of the most severe psychological crises the Israeli military has faced in decades.
Earlier this year, Haaretz reported that Israeli military suicides reached 21 in 2024 and 22 in 2025—the highest annual totals in roughly 15 years. Israel's oldest daily newspaper also found that the military had reduced the number of mental health officers available to soldiers despite unprecedented demand for psychological services.
The crisis has been exacerbated by repeated troop deployments since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack—itself the cause of tremendous trauma and some suicides by survivors—and Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza, which has been characterized by what prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague say are crimes against humanity and war crimes, and what a United Nations panel of experts said is a genocide.
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza, some of them reportedly executed at close range.
IDF troops and Israeli and international medical workers have described the deliberate and indiscriminate shooting of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, some of whom were reportedly executed. Former Palestinian prisoners and Israeli troops and doctors have also reported torture and sexual abuse of detainees, and of civilians including children and even a toddler. Such carnage and abuse has taken a toll on the perpetrators as well as their victims.
A persistent stigma surrounding mental health treatment also discourages many soldiers from seeking the care they need. Some fear being viewed as weak or worry that treatment could adversely affect their military service or relationships, despite ongoing efforts to destigmatize the issue.
A senior IDF commander told the Israeli public broadcaster Kan last year that "most of the suicides resulted from the complex reality created by the war," adding, "War has consequences."
Earlier this year, Reuters reported that the IDF had recorded a nearly 40% increase in post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops since September 2023, with 60% of the 22,300 people being treated for war wounds experiencing PTSD. The news agency cited an Israeli parliamentary committee's finding that 279 soldiers had attempted to kill themselves in the period from January 2024 to July 2025, and that IDF combat soldiers comprised 78% of all suicides in Israel in 2024.
Some observers—especially Palestine defenders—have little sympathy for IDF soldiers who kill themselves, pointing to the widespread crimes being committed in Gaza and throughout illegally occupied Palestine, including apartheid, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing.
Others, recognizing their humanity and the moral injury that experts say afflicts many participants in war, mourn these deaths while maintaining that compassion for soldiers must never eclipse accountability for crimes against Palestinians.
After Eliran Mizrahi, a 40-year-old Israeli father of four, killed himself in 2024, his sister told CNN, “He always said no one will understand what [he] saw."
Mizrahi's mother said that "he saw a lot of people die. Maybe he even killed someone. [But] we don’t teach our children to do things like this… so, when he did this, something like this, maybe it was a shock for him.”
US psychologist Rachel Kabasakalian-McKay coined the term “complex implication” to define how “history often implicates us in networks of harm, even as we carry our own traumas."
"As humans," she explained in a 2025 interview with Psychology Today, "we can be both victims and perpetrators.”
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A Global Message to TikTok: Stop Your Profit Model of 'Toxic and Addictive' Content for Kids
"TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
Nov 25, 2025
A group of digital activists is set to deliver a message to social media giant TikTok on Tuesday to clean up its "toxic and addictive" business model.
The petition, which has more than 170,000 signatures and is being circulated by human rights watchdog Amnesty International, will be delivered to TikTok's office in Dublin, Ireland by activists Mary Kate Harten and Trinity Kendi of Ireland; Abril Perazzini of Argentina; and Noe Hamon of France.
In the petition, Amnesty accuses TikTok of becoming "a space that is more and more toxic and addictive," and can potentially harm the "self-image, mental health, well-being of younger users."
Amnesty International campaigner Zahra Asif Razvi said that the petition is demanding that TikTok completely redo its business model to be built around user safety.
"These signatures represent a global demand for TikTok to replace its current business model of an app that is addictive by design with one that is safe by design," she said. "TikTok must make its platform safe for children and young people to socialize, learn and access information and not be harmed."
The human rights group says that its own research released last month shows that TikTok prioritizes user engagement over safety, and will often send young users to videos featuring "depression, self-harm and suicide content" on its platform.
Lisa Dittmer, Amnesty International's researcher on children and young people's digital rights, explained that teen users who express interest in content related to mental health can be pulled into "toxic rabbit holes" that glorify self-harm.
"Within just three to four hours of engaging with TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed, teenage test accounts were exposed to videos that romanticized suicide or showed young people expressing intentions to end their lives, including information on suicide methods," she explained. "The testimonies of young people and bereaved parents in France reveal how TikTok normalized and exacerbated self-harm and suicidal ideation up to the point of recommending content on 'suicide challenges.'"
Amnesty's petition comes one week after the American Psychological Association (APA) published research that accumulated data collected in more than 70 other studies and found that excessive use of short-form video apps such as TikTok and Instagram "is associated with poorer cognitive and mental health in both youths and adults."
The research's findings were particularly troublesome concerning the impacts on young people's cognitive development, as they found that "repeated exposure to highly stimulating, fast-paced content may contribute to habituation, in which users become desensitized to slower, more effortful cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving, or deep learning."
The APA's study found that having the ability to swipe away from videos that don't offer instant gratification "could support a pattern of rapid disengagement from stimuli that do not provide immediate novelty or excitement," and thus "may diminish attentional control and reduce the capacity for sustained cognitive engagement, as cognitive processing becomes increasingly oriented toward brief, high-reward interactions rather than extended, goal-directed tasks."
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Why Male Suicide Prevention Requires Policy, Not Just Awareness
On this Suicide Prevention Day, the question is whether we will stop treating male suicide as a seasonal headline and start treating it as a preventable epidemic.
Sep 10, 2025
Today is September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day. The hashtags are already out. Politicians are tweeting about “awareness.” Nonprofits are posting hotline numbers. News outlets will run a few stories, maybe a profile of a grieving family or a segment on rising youth anxiety. Communities will hold vigils and light candles. And then, as happens every September, Congress will return to debating budgets that cut the very services that keep people alive.
Suicide has become an annual ritual of shock, treated as if it were a hurricane that blew in unannounced instead of a slow-moving crisis we have been measuring for decades.
Suicide is not weather. It is not random. It is patterned, predictable, and preventable. Rates climb where jobs collapse and housing becomes unstable. They spread where guns are plentiful and mental healthcare is scarce. They grow in cultures that equate vulnerability with weakness. And they accelerate when elected officials strip away the programs that keep people from falling over the edge.
I know the consequences of silence. My father died by suicide when I was young. For more than a decade, I did not know how he died. My family believed silence could protect me. But silence also isolates, leaving questions that cannot be asked and grief that cannot be named. That fog never fully lifts. It is a reminder that behind every statistic is a family that carries loss forward, often without words for it.
That loss is now multiplied across nearly 50,000 American families each year. Almost 50,000 people died by suicide in 2022—the highest number ever recorded—and nearly 50,000 again in 2023. That is one death every 11 minutes. Three out of four were men. Men are half the country yet nearly 80% of its suicides. The rate for men over 85 is the highest of any group, 15 times higher than women of the same age. Middle-aged men follow close behind, especially in rural counties where work has dried up, institutions have withered, and guns are everywhere. Even among younger men, suicide remains a leading cause of death.
The methods matter. More than half of suicides now involve a firearm. Men are far more likely than women to use a gun, and that choice often makes the difference between an attempt and a death. A gun is immediate and almost always fatal. A moment of despair becomes permanent because the tool at hand was designed to be permanent. Where lethal means are easy and care is scarce, brief despair turns irreversible. States with higher gun ownership have higher suicide rates. The connection is not mysterious. It is arithmetic.
Suicide is not inevitable. It rises when supports are stripped and stigma is reinforced.
Economics tell the same story. Men who lose jobs, homes, or the ability to provide are at higher risk. One national study found that more than 1 in 5 men aged 45 to 64 who died by suicide had recently lost a job, faced eviction, or been buried by debt. When a man’s sense of worth is tied to being a provider, losing that role can feel like losing his reason to live. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton called these “deaths of despair,” and the label fits. But despair is not destiny. Raise the minimum wage, expand tax credits, stabilize housing, and suicides among working-class men decline. Let wages stagnate, strip away safety nets, and suicides rise. If despair tracks wages and rent, then budgets decide who lives long enough to get help.
Budgets are moral documents. In 2025, the Trump administration proposed cutting more than a billion dollars from the nation’s main mental health agency. That means fewer clinics, fewer treatment teams, fewer crisis counselors. The same budget threatened to scrap parts of the 988 crisis line, including its LGBTQ youth service. At the Department of Education, $1 billion in school counselor grants was pulled back, leaving rural districts that had finally hired mental health staff facing layoffs. Insurance rules that would have forced companies to cover therapy on par with physical health were paused. On homelessness, the administration reversed Housing First, vowing instead to sweep encampments, force treatment, and “bring back asylums.” Each of these choices falls hardest on men. When Medicaid is cut, when housing supports vanish, when community clinics close, the men most in need are left to cycle through emergency rooms, jails, or morgues.
Policy failures meet cultural stigma. Only about a third of men say they would seek professional help if depressed, compared to nearly 60% of women. The rest say they would handle it on their own, or not at all. That reluctance is reinforced by leaders and influencers. US President Donald Trump once suggested veterans with PTSD “aren’t strong.” Andrew Tate tells millions of young men that “depression isn’t real.” Jordan Peterson blames despair on feminism and political correctness. These voices frame pain as weakness, recast systemic causes as personal failings, and tell men that asking for help makes them lesser. For someone already on the edge, that message can be lethal.
And when suicide is mentioned in politics, it is often weaponized rather than addressed. Commentators invoke male suicide to claim that society only cares about women or minorities. Lawmakers cite “what’s happening to our boys” while voting against Medicaid expansion or school mental health funding. Grievance substitutes for prevention. The fire is pointed to, then the water is cut.
The alternative is straightforward, if not simple. Treat the 988 crisis line like 911: permanent, funded, universal. Expand Medicaid and enforce insurance parity so therapy is covered like any other medical need. Keep counselors in schools. Invest in housing with voluntary supports. Build mobile crisis teams so despair meets a trained counselor, not a police squad. And meet men where they are: union halls, barber shops, job sites, veterans’ groups.
We know this works. In Colorado, “Man Therapy” has used humor and direct language to reach men who would never otherwise consider counseling. Veterans’ peer networks reduce stigma and improve follow-through on care. In Australia, the “Men’s Shed” movement has built thousands of local spaces where older men gather, work on projects, and informally support one another—a model credited with reducing isolation and depression. These are not small-scale experiments. They are blueprints for national policy.
Suicide is not inevitable. It rises when supports are stripped and stigma is reinforced. It falls when care is reachable, affordable, and treated as normal. My father’s death remains a personal loss. But the broader crisis is a collective choice. We know the patterns. We know the risks. We know the solutions. What remains is whether policymakers are willing to act on them.
On this Suicide Prevention Day, the question is not whether we will keep raising awareness. It is whether we will stop treating male suicide as a seasonal headline and start treating it as a preventable epidemic. If policymakers can count the dead, they can also count the votes that decide whether men keep dying at this scale. The choice is not between silence and hashtags. It is between burying another 50,000 next year—or building a country where men live long enough to be heard.
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Suicide Rates Among Young Men Are On the Rise; Toxic Masculinity May Be To Blame
Masculine representations rooted in ideals that reward toughness, emotional suppression, and dominance are quietly accelerating a mental health crisis among young men.
Sep 02, 2025
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is now the second leading cause of death among males aged 15-29, and suicide rates among young men in the US have risen by roughly a third since 2010. Across much of Africa, where I work as a public health and gender equality practitioner, men make up the vast majority of suicide deaths, and in Lesotho, the country with the highest suicide rate globally, men are dying at three times the rate of women.
Rigid gender roles may be to blame. Masculine representations rooted in ideals that reward toughness, emotional suppression, and dominance are quietly accelerating a mental health crisis among young men. These rigid norms don’t simply discourage boys from seeking help; they actively shame vulnerability, equate emotional expression with weakness, and isolate those who are struggling. In cultures where being “a real man” means staying silent, mental distress festers in the dark. Unless we confront and transform these harmful ideals, any global response to youth mental health will be incomplete—and too late for many.
In many parts of Africa, young men grow up under intense pressure to become providers, protectors, and problem-solvers. These roles and expectations are deeply tied to their perceived worth. But when systemic barriers like poverty, unemployment, or lack of education make these ideals unreachable, the emotional toll can be devastating. With mental health services scarce and stigma-free spaces almost nonexistent, many suffer in silence.
Instead of seeking support through therapy or confiding in someone they trust, many young men cope with inner distress by turning to alcohol, aggression, or silent withdrawal. These internalized ideals of “staying strong” act like slow-burning fuses. Left unaddressed, emotional strain builds until it erupts often into breakdowns, which spiral into isolation, and eventually, into tragedy. Many of these young men appear perfectly “fine” on the surface, attending school, church, or work, making it easy for their pain to go unnoticed, even by those closest to them. While many girls and young women are increasingly accessing mental health resources even in under-resourced settings, young men remain notably absent from these services. In Rwanda, a study revealed that girls are more likely to utilize youth health friendly services than their counterpart boys. This disparity is not unique to Rwanda; similar trends are observed in west African regions, where mental health services for adolescents are limited, and boys often do not seek help due to societal expectations and stigma.
To be sure, women and girls continue to face serious mental health challenges, often exacerbated by gender-based violence and limited access to care. Recognizing their struggles does not diminish the urgent need to address the silent crisis among young men. Both require focused attention if we are to improve youth mental health across societies. Yet ignoring the silent struggles specific to young men is costing lives worldwide.
To effectively tackle this issue, we must address the needs of all adolescents, with attention to those most at risk. This means introducing gender-transformative education that teaches emotional literacy and normalizes help seeking as strength. We need male-friendly, culturally grounded safe spaces in schools, sports clubs, faith groups, and online where boys can be vulnerable without judgment. Mental health professionals must adopt gender transformative approaches that understand masculinity’s impact on behavior.
Above all, media and storytelling must shift the narrative so boys grow up knowing that feeling is not failure. Imagine a generation of boys brave enough to ask for help, a future where strength includes compassion, and manhood means connection, not isolation. This is the future we owe boys and men. No young man should have to choose between silence and survival.
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'Incomprehensible': Trump Admin To Shut Down LGBTQ+ Suicide Hotline
"This is devastating, to say the least," said one critic of the White House decision to dismantle a program that has served nearly 1.3 million young people in recent years. "Suicide prevention is about people, not politics."
Jun 19, 2025
In the midst of Pride Month, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump announced that it will shut down the national suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth.
Since 2022, the National Suicide Hotline, accessible by dialing 988, allowed users to "press 3" to speak with counselors trained to support LGBTQ+ youth.
According to the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization that was contracted to run the hotline, LGBTQ+ youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers and 41% of them seriously considered suicide in the past year. Now, the service that is meant to help them will be shut down on July 17.
A statement released Tuesday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said that the hotline "will no longer silo LGB+ youth services," using a hateful and discriminatory abbreviation that excludes transgender and queer individuals, which has become standard for the Trump administration. SAMHSA insisted that it would continue "serving all help seekers, including those" who used the LGBTQ+ hotline.
However, as Adrian Shanker, a senior advisor to the Biden administration on issues related to gender and sexual identity, told Mother Jones, the LGBTQ+ suicide prevention service was created to deal with the exceptionally high influx of calls from people in that community and designed to meet their specific needs. According to SAMHSA data, the hotline has served nearly 1.3 million callers since its creation in 2022.
"This is not about politics. It's not about the political divide on transgender medicine or trans people in the military, or any of the other hot-button political topics," Shanker said. "This is about suicide prevention and crisis intervention for people living at a higher rate of suicide risk."
The legislation that added special counseling for high-risk populations, including LGBTQ+ youth, was signed by President Trump in 2020. But since its passage, far-right attacks on sexual and gender minorities have become a core part of the Republican platform and the second Trump administration.
Since taking office, the administration has introduced measures that seek to erase transgender people from public life. These have included barring people from identifying as their preferred gender on federal documents, stripping the funds from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, and erasing the history of transgender Americans from government websites. They have described these efforts as part of a crusade to eliminate "radical gender ideology."
In their efforts to shut down the suicide prevention program, members of the administration have invoked age-old stereotypes accusing gay and trans people of abusing vulnerable youth.
Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, told NBC News last week that it defended efforts to defund the suicide hotline because "children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents." Another unnamed senior administration official described the organizations who provided this mental health care to vulnerable youth as "radical grooming contractors."
Ironically, rising bigotry has been one of the driving forces of the LGBTQ+ suicide epidemic. A study published by Nature Human Behavior and the Trevor Project last year found that in states that enacted anti-trans laws, the rate of suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary teenagers increased from 7% to 72%.
"This is devastating, to say the least," Trevor Project CEO Jaymes Black said in a Wednesday statement about the closure of the suicide hotline. "Suicide prevention is about people, not politics. The administration’s decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible."
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AI Firm Sued Over Chatbot That Suggested It Was OK for Child to Kill Parents
"In their rush to extract young people's data and sow addiction, Character.AI has created a product so flawed and dangerous that its chatbots are literally inciting children to harm themselves and others," said one advocate.
Dec 10, 2024
"You know sometimes I'm not surprised when I read the news and I see stuff like 'child kills parents after a decade of physical and emotional abuse' stuff like this makes me understand a little bit why it happens."
That's a message sent to a child in Texas from a Character.AI chatbot, indicating to the boy that "murdering his parents was a reasonable response to their limiting of his online activity," according to a federal lawsuit filed in Texas district court Monday.
The complaint was brought by two families in Texas who allege that the Google-backed chatbot service Character.AI harmed their two children, including sexually exploiting and abusing the elder, a 17-year-old with high functioning autism, by targeting him with extreme sexual themes like incest and pushing him to self-harm.
The parents argue that Character.AI, "through its design, poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others. Inherent to the underlying data and design of C.AI is a prioritization of overtly sensational and violent responses."
Google is also named as a defendant in the suit. In their filing, the plaintiffs argue that the tech company supported Character.AI's launch even though they knew that it was a "defective product."
The families, who are being represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, have asked the court to take the product offline.
The explosive court filing comes not long after a mother in Florida filed a separate lawsuit against Character.AI in October, arguing that the chatbot service is responsible for the death of her teenage son because it allegedly encouraged him to commit suicide, per CNN.
Character.AI is different than other chatbots in that it lets uses interact with artificial intelligence "characters." The Texas complaint alleges that the 17-year-old, for example, engaged in a conversation with a character modeled after the celebrity Billie Eilish. These sorts of "companion apps" are finding a growing audience, even though researchers have long warned of the perils of building relationships with chatbots, according to The Washington Post.
A spokesperson for Character.AI declined to comment directly on the lawsuit when asked by NPR, but said the company does have guardrails in place overseeing what chatbots can and cannot say to teen users.
"We warned that Character.AI's dangerous and manipulative design represented a threat to millions of children," said Social Media Victims Law Center founding attorney Matthew P. Bergman. "Now more of these cases are coming to light. The consequences of Character.AI's negligence are shocking and widespread." Social Media Victims Law Center is the plaintiff's counsel in the Florida lawsuit as well.
Josh Golin, the executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit children's advocacy group, echoed those remarks, saying that "in their rush to extract young people's data and sow addiction, Character.AI has created a product so flawed and dangerous that its chatbots are literally inciting children to harm themselves and others."
"Platforms like Character.AI should not be allowed to perform uncontrolled experiments on our children or encourage kids to form parasocial relationships with bots their developers cannot control," he added.
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My Best Friend Died By Firearm Suicide; Here’s Why I Advocate for Stronger Gun Safety Laws
With just one month until election day, it’s time for American voters to come together and elect leaders who will fight to protect our communities from gun violence.
Oct 05, 2024
Warning: This piece discusses suicide, gun violence, and mental health. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org/chat to chat with a counselor from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Last year, I received a text that would change my life forever. I was told that my close friend, Jordan, had died by firearm suicide. Calls from classmates came crashing in and emails from my school flooded my inbox. A wave of shock rushed over me and it felt like time had frozen, even as I watched the world continue on.
My school held an assembly to honor Jordan’s memory, but it all became a blur between the tears, hugs, tissues, and funeral.
Jordan holds a special place in my heart. Not only because we were on the same lacrosse team, but because she was a shining light and a good friend. She was always there for me when I needed her, but little did I know Jordan was battling a thunderstorm on the inside.
Amidst all my grief, there was a part of me that was also angry because politicians sent their condolences, but no action was taken. I wanted something to change.
There are thousands of students and young people just like me across the country who are committed to creating a future free from gun violence.
The tragedy of this story isn’t just about Jordan; it’s the fact that her story is not unique. When there are over 3,000 young people who die by gun suicide in an average year, something has to change. Stronger gun safety measures, like secure storage requirements, in our country can save lives and prevent more friends and families from feeling the pain I’ve felt.
Firearm suicide has a deadly and devastating impact on my generation. Over the past decade, gun suicide rates for young people have increased faster than any other age group, reaching a near-record high. When it comes to attempted suicide, guns are especially deadly. We have to do more to reduce easy access to guns in a moment of crisis since the majority of people who survive a suicide attempt don’t go on to attempt again.
Those statistics should be a wake-up call for every gun owner, politician, and person in the United States on why it’s so important to prevent firearm access for someone contemplating suicide. That’s where laws like secure storage requirements come in.
Secure storage is the practice of gun owners making their homes and communities safer by storing their guns securely. This means storing a firearm unloaded, locked, and separate from ammunition. Research shows that most firearm suicides attempted by youth occur at home, and households that securely store guns and ammunition reduce this risk by 78% comapared to those that don’t.
There is a direct correlation between securely storing a gun at home and saving a life from firearm suicide. That’s why we need lawmakers at every level of government to increase awareness around secure storage practices and pass laws that require gun owners to store their guns securely.
With just one month until election day, it’s time for American voters to come together and elect leaders who will fight to protect our communities from gun violence. From electing Vice President Harris and Governor Walz at the top of the ticket to voting for gun sense candidates down ballot, these are the candidates that are fighting to end gun violence while the other side is doing absolutely nothing.
Even in the face of tragedy, I still have hope. Firearm suicide, just like all forms of gun violence, is preventable.
After the loss of my best friend, I felt devastated and I wanted to find a community that shared my similar experiences. I soon discovered Students Demand Action, the nation's largest youth-led gun prevention group, and started a chapter at my school. Since then, I have been actively involved in fighting for gun violence prevention in California, and I’m just getting started.
We should all be aware of the warning signs and how to help when someone is in crisis. Whether it’s having a private conversation to let someone know you’re there for them or sharing mental health resources, that one step could save a life.
There are thousands of students and young people just like me across the country who are committed to creating a future free from gun violence. Guns are the leading cause of death for my generation, meaning youth firearm suicide is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. When guns are accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time—no one is safe.
But even in the face of tragedy, I still have hope. Firearm suicide, just like all forms of gun violence, is preventable. Joining Students Demand Action allowed me to turn my pain into purpose and together, we can end America’s gun violence epidemic by creating a future for our generation that’s free from gun violence.Keep ReadingShow Less
Rising Military Suicides Bring the War on Terror Home
As with its post-9/11 wars and interventions, the U.S. military’s effort to stem suicides has come up distinctly short.
Jul 26, 2024
At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts that would send home a stream of “wooden boxes and coffins” and weaken American resolve. “This is when you will leave,” he predicted.
After the 9/11 attacks, Washington took the bait, launching interventions across the Greater Middle East and Africa. What followed was a slew of sputtering counterterrorism failures and stalemates in places ranging from Niger and Burkina Faso to Somalia and Yemen, a dismal loss, after 20 years, in Afghanistan, and a costly fiasco in Iraq. And just as bin Laden predicted, those conflicts led to discontent in the United States. Americans finally turned against the war in Afghanistan after 10 years of fighting there, while it took only a little more than a year for the public to conclude that the Iraq war wasn’t worth the cost. Still, those conflicts dragged on. To date, more than 7,000 U.S. troops have died fighting the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other militant groups.
As lethal as those Islamist fighters have been, however, another “enemy” has proven far more deadly for American forces: themselves. A recent Pentagon study found suicide to be the leading cause of death among active-duty U.S. Army personnel. Out of 2,530 soldiers who died between 2014 and 2019 from causes ranging from car crashes to drug overdoses to cancer, 35%—883 troops—took their own lives. Just 96 soldiers died in combat during those same six years.
The war that bin Laden kicked off in 2001—a global conflict that still grinds on today—ushered in an era in which SEALs, soldiers, and other military personnel have continued to die by their own hands at an escalating rate.
Those military findings bolster other recent investigations. The journalism nonprofit Voice of San Diego found, for example, that young men in the military are more likely to take their own lives than their civilian peers. The suicide rate for American soldiers has, in fact, risen steadily since the Army began tracking it 20 years ago.
Last year, the medical journal JAMA Neurology reported that the suicide rate among U.S. veterans was 31.7 per 100,000—57% greater than that of non-veterans. And that followed a 2021 study by Brown University’s Costs of War Project which found that, compared to those who died in combat, at least four times as many active-duty military personnel and post-9/11 war veterans—an estimated 30,177 of them—had killed themselves.
“High suicide rates mark the failure of the U.S. government and U.S. society to manage the mental health costs of our current conflicts,” wrote Thomas Howard Suitt, author of the Costs of War report. “The U.S. government’s inability to address the suicide crisis is a significant cost of the U.S. post-9/11 wars, and the result is a mental health crisis among our veterans and service members with significant long-term consequences.”
Military Shocked (Shocked!) by a Rise in Suicides
In June, a New York Times front-page investigation found that at least a dozen Navy SEALs had died by suicide in the last 10 years, either while on active duty or shortly after leaving military service. Thanks to an effort by the families of those deceased special operators, eight of their brains were delivered to a specialized Defense Department brain trauma laboratory in Maryland. Researchers there discovered blast damage in every one of them—a particular pattern only seen in people exposed repeatedly to blast waves like SEALs endure from weapons fired in years of training and war-zone deployments as well as explosions encountered in combat.
The Navy claimed that it hadn’t been informed of the lab’s findings until the Times contacted them. A Navy officer with ties to SEAL leadership expressed shock to reporter Dave Philipps. “That’s the problem,” said that anonymous officer. “We are trying to understand this issue, but so often the information never reaches us.”
None of it should, however, have been surprising.
Unfortunately (though Osama bin Laden would undoubtedly have been pleased), the military has a history of not taking suicide prevention seriously.
After all, while writing for the Times in 2020, I revealed the existence of an unpublished internal study, commissioned by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), on the suicides of Special Operations forces (SOF). Conducted by the American Association of Suicidology, one of the nation’s oldest suicide-prevention organizations, and completed sometime after January 2017, the undated 46-page report put together the findings of 29 “psychological autopsies,” including detailed interviews with 81 next-of-kin and close friends of commandos who had killed themselves between 2012 and 2015.
That study told the military to better track and monitor data on the suicides of its elite troops. “Further research and an improved data surveillance system are needed in order to better understand the risk and protective factors for suicide among SOF members. Further research and a comprehensive data system is needed to monitor the demographics and characteristics of SOF members who die by suicide,” the researchers advised. “Additionally, the data emerging from this study has highlighted the need for research to better understand the factors associated with SOF suicides.”
Quite obviously, it never happened.
The brain trauma suffered by SEALs and the suicides that followed should not have been a shock. A 2022 study in Military Medicine found Special Operations forces were at increased risk for traumatic brain injury (TBI), when compared with conventional troops. The 2023 JAMA Neurology study similarly found that veterans with TBI had suicide rates 56% higher than veterans without it and three times higher than the U.S. adult population. And a Harvard study, funded by SOCOM and published in April, discovered an association between blast exposure and compromised brain function in active-duty commandos. The greater the exposure, the researchers found, the more health problems were reported.
Studies on the Shelf
Over the last two decades, the Defense Department has, in fact, spent millions of dollars on suicide prevention research. According to the recent Pentagon study of soldiers’ deaths at their own hands, the “Army implements various initiatives that evaluate, identify, and track high-risk individuals for suicidal behavior and other adverse outcomes.” Unfortunately (though Osama bin Laden would undoubtedly have been pleased), the military has a history of not taking suicide prevention seriously.
While the Navy, for example, officially mandated that a suicide hotline for veterans must be accessible from the homepage of every Navy website, an internal audit found that most of the pages reviewed were not in compliance. In fact, according to a 2022 investigation by The Intercept, the audit showed that 62% of the 58 Navy homepages did not comply with that service’s regulations for how to display the link to the Veterans Crisis Line.
Last year, a Pentagon suicide-prevention committee called attention to lax rules on firearms, high operational tempos, and the poor quality of life on military bases as potential problems for the mental health of troops.
The New York Times recently investigated the death of Army Specialist Austin Valley and discovered gross suicide prevention deficiencies. Having just arrived at an Army base in Poland from Fort Riley, Kansas, Valley texted his parents, “Hey mom and dad I love you it was never your fault,” before taking his own life. The Times found that “mental healthcare providers in the Army are beholden to brigade leadership and often fail to act in the best interest of soldiers.” There are, for example, only about 20 mental-health counselors available to care for the more than 12,000 soldiers at Fort Riley, according to the Times. As a result, soldiers like Valley can wait weeks or even months for care.
The Army claims it’s working to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health support, but the Times found that “unit leadership often undermines some of its most basic safety protocols.” This is a long-running issue in the military. The study of Special Operations suicides that I revealed in the Times found that suicide prevention training was seen as a “check in the box.” Special operators believed their careers would be negatively impacted if they sought treatment.
Last year, a Pentagon suicide-prevention committee called attention to lax rules on firearms, high operational tempos, and the poor quality of life on military bases as potential problems for the mental health of troops. M. David Rudd, a clinical psychologist and the director of the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Memphis, told to the Times that the Pentagon report echoed many other analyses produced since 2008. “My expectation,” he concluded, “is that this study will sit on a shelf just like all the others, unimplemented.”
Bin Laden’s Triumph
On May 2, 2011, Navy SEALs attacked a residential compound in Pakistan and gunned down Osama bin Laden. “For us to be able to definitively say, ‘We got the man who caused thousands of deaths here in the United States and who had been the rallying point for a violent extremist jihad around the world’ was something that I think all of us were profoundly grateful to be a part of,” U.S. President Barack Obama commented afterward. In reality, the deaths “here in the United States” have never ended. And the war that bin Laden kicked off in 2001—a global conflict that still grinds on today—ushered in an era in which SEALs, soldiers, and other military personnel have continued to die by their own hands at an escalating rate.
The suicides of U.S. military personnel have been blamed on a panoply of reasons, including military culture, ready access to firearms, high exposure to trauma, excessive stress, the rise of improvised explosive devices, repeated head trauma, an increase in traumatic brain injuries, the Global War on Terror’s protracted length, and even the American public’s disinterest in their country’s post-9/11 wars.
Bin Laden is, of course, long dead, but the post-9/11 parade of U.S. corpses continues.
During 20-plus years of armed interventions by the country that still prides itself on being the Earth’s sole superpower, U.S. military missions have been repeatedly upended across South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa including a sputtering stalemate in Somalia, an intervention-turned-blowback-engine in Libya, and outright implosions in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the peoples of those countries have suffered the most, U.S. troops have also been caught in that maelstrom of America’s making.
Bin Laden’s dream of luring American troops into a meat-grinder war on “Muslim soil” never quite came to pass. Compared to previous conflicts like the Second World War, Korean, and Vietnam wars, U.S. battlefield casualties in the Greater Middle East and Africa have been relatively modest. But bin Laden’s prediction of “wooden boxes and coffins” filled with the “bodies of American troops” nonetheless came true in its own fashion.
“This Department’s most precious resource is our people. Therefore, we must spare no effort in working to eliminate suicide within our ranks,” wrote Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a public memo released last year. “One loss to suicide is too many.” But as with its post-9/11 wars and interventions, the U.S. military’s effort to stem suicides has come up distinctly short. And like the losses, stalemates, and fiascos of that grim war on terror, the fallout has been more suffering and death. Bin Laden is, of course, long dead, but the post-9/11 parade of U.S. corpses continues. The unanticipated toll of suicides by troops and veterans—four times the number of war-on-terror battlefield deaths—has become another Pentagon failure and bin Laden’s enduring triumph.
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Theatre of Cruelty—And Its Double: From Aaron Bushnell to Biden's Gaza Airdrop
The real purpose of this spectacle was to deliver votes for the president, not meals for the starving.
Mar 04, 2024
The head of Save the Children described the Biden Administration’s recent airdrop of food into Gaza airdrop as “theater.” That it is. So is the Vice President’s sudden “demand” for a six-week ceasefire. For that matter, so is the ceasefire itself — if it happens. It’s likely to be characterized by ongoing immiseration and slow death, to be followed by the faster forms of killing.
It’s an American theater of cruelty whose real purpose is to deliver votes for the president, not meals for the starving. It will end as it began: in fire. The question is, what kind of fire and for whom?
Breadcrumbs
The American airdrop consisted of 38,000 “MRE’s,” or “Meals Ready to Eat,” those unwholesome feed bags the US military buys by the millions to feed its underpaid and undervalued soldiers. To call this gesture a publicity stunt is unfair to publicity stunts, which are hollow but rarely lethal. It’s part of a killing strategy of deflection and deception.
More than 2,100,000 people are starving in Gaza; the children are already dying. If divided evenly, every person in Gaza would receive precisely 1.8 percent of each bag pictured above – that is, if they got any of it, which is unlikely amidst all the US-backed chaos. Hunger can’t be cured homeopathically, with microscopic doses.
The average weight of an MRE is 22 ounces. (I looked it up.) That means this airdrop provided roughly one-third of an ounce of food for every man, woman, and child. That’s like a bird hunter scattering breadcrumbs for pigeons before he starts killing them again.
At the going price for MREs (I looked that up, too), the retail cost of the food dropped comes to $617,405. That’s 29 cents for every starving person in Gaza (which is pretty much all of them.) And the military probably got a discount.
Perhaps the cost should be billed to the Biden campaign. Its real purpose is to offset the growing backlash against the administration’s support for mass slaughter, which was quantified in the Michigan primary’s surge of anti-Biden “uncommitted” votes. The president has seemed publicly insensate to the deaths of children, but even his dimming organs of perception can smell unfriendly votes. And whatever he doesn’t catch, his advisors presumably will.
Meanwhile, the president and his party continue to push a bill that would provide $14 billion in military aid to Israel. That’s more than twenty-two thousand times as much as the US spent on this food drop. Roughly $10 billion of that would consist of weapons for the IDF, including “advanced weapons systems” like the ones that are currently destroying apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals.
That cost should be billed to the American conscience.
The Airdrop Show
From the Washington Post: “Critics say airdrops are expensive and ineffective, and argue diplomatic efforts should be focused on opening Gaza’s border crossing to allow aid convoys access.” But that would require confronting Israel, which the Biden Administration has yet to do in any meaningful way.
The United States could send food aid on ships to the Gaza shore with troops through the Rafah Crossing. It could confront Israel with a simple choice: fire on our military, or accept that the policy of mass starvation has come to an end. The fact that it doesn’t means that the dying will continue.
The same inaction gives the lie to Kamala Harris’ belated discovery that “people in Gaza are starving” and her lofty call for “an immediate ceasefire” – which sounds good, except that the administration is absolving Israel of all responsibility for the deaths and for the lack of a ceasefire.
The latest evidence for that was a press briefing in which two unnamed “senior administration officials” spoke on conditions of anonymity (conditions which the media should not have accepted, according to the professional standards of journalism.)
“Can you say broadly whether you feel that Israel is cooperating enough on getting aid into Gaza?” they were asked. “Do you feel that having done this, having had to do this airdrop today, is a statement at all on their cooperation?”
“The challenge is from various sources.” Replied “Senior Administration Official,” but “it is not a reflection on Israel or Israeli practices. It's a reflection on need. The need is there.”
Got that? Israel had nothing to do with it. “The need” just appeared and is now simply “there.”
Palestine is the land of biblical miracles, but that’s a new one.
Acts of Submission
Robert Ford, a much-decorated career diplomat and former ambassador to Syria, tweeted:
“I've seen Israel humiliate previous US administrations, but … forcing USA to do airdrops of aid to Gaza as if USA is no better than Egypt & Jordan is Israel's worst humiliation of USA i've ever seen.”
Even now, Biden responds to this humiliation with more acts of submission and collaboration. His unnamed officials blamed the ongoing violence solely on one party, saying it continues
“because a terrorist group holding hostages, including Americans, is continuing to fight and attack. They could stop this -- Hamas could -- tonight, instantly, and allow the free movement of assistance, medicine, care to go to the civilians of Gaza with whom, under whom, in whose homes they have embedded themselves for these past 17 years.”
This is Netanyahu’s rhetoric. But even if all these claims are true (they’re highly disputable), none justify the ongoing, criminal violence being waged on a civilian population.
The anonymous officials also proclaimed that Hamas is holding up a ceasefire agreement but insisted that Israel has “more or less” agreed to it. Hamas showed up the following day for a negotiation session; Israel did not. That was no surprise. Anyone who has done any deals at all knows that people either agree or they don’t. “More or less” is the language of the huckster, not the diplomat.
No wonder those officials remained anonymous. Perhaps they, unlike their boss, retain a vestigial sense of shame.
But I doubt it.
Starving the Victims
Neither the president nor his newly high-minded VP have renounced their own Senate bill, which provides billions to the Israeli war machine while ending all support for UNRWA — the most vital aid agency in Gaza — and pledging no minimum amount of aid in return.
Even the European Union, whose actions have largely been shameful on this issue, has reversed itself on UNRWA. Its top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has acknowledged that UNRWA is an “irreplaceable actor.”
The EU is still holding back some funds, regrettably, but it has released $54 millionand has promised additional funding after certain conditions are met. Biden and his party have yet to change their position, even as more children die of starvation.
The Importance of Burning
Which brings us to an update on the sacrifice of airman Aaron Bushnell, who immolated himself outside the Israeli Embassy while shouting “Free Palestine!” A law enforcement officer shouted, “I don't need guns, I need fire extinguishers.”
That phrase should become the guiding principle of American foreign policy.
I’ve been reluctant to write about Bushnell’s act. Not because I don’t admire it — I do — but because those of us who have struggled with depression have an intimate relationship with suicide. Perhaps too intimate to be objective.
But this wasn’t suicide. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965. In his letter, he explains the actions of the monks who immolated themselves during the Vietnam War. One sentence struck me then, just as it strikes me now:
“The importance is not to take one’s life, but to burn.”
He continued:
“To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with the utmost of courage, frankness, determination and sincerity.”
My fear – and, frankly, my expectation – was that Bushnell’s sacrifice would be ignored. Instead, it has resonated. His memory has been kept alive in the discourse. Maybe, just maybe, something is awakening in the American conscience.
The Theater of Cruelty and Its Double
The French actor and playwright Antonin Artaud developed the concept of a “theater of cruelty” as a way to awaken audiences with “the fiery magnetism of its images,” until it becomes “a spiritual therapeutics whose touch can never be forgotten.”
One of Artaud’s dramas was intended to reflect “the Fall of Jerusalem, according to the Bible and history; with the blood-red color that trickles from it and the people's feeling of abandon and panic visible even in the light.”
History repeats itself, as the indigenous people of the region once again feel a sense of abandon and panic that is almost “visible in the light.”
Artaud was also fascinated by the story of Rabbi Shimon, a pioneer in the same mystical tradition that must have guided my great-grandfather as a rabbinical judge in 19th-century Russia-Ukraine.
The story of Shimon’s death as it has been sent down goes like this, as summarized in a Jewish Kabbalist website:
“On that day fire surrounded the house of Rabbi Shimon ... fire from the heavens descended and surrounded Rabbi Shimon. It gave him protection and opened a pure path for his soul ascending the upper worlds.”
Artaud wrote that Shimon’s mystical story “has the ever-present violence and force of a conflagration.” The story of the rabbi “who burns like fire,” he wrote, “is as immediate as fire itself.”
The fiery magnetism of Aaron Bushnell’s sacrifice has touched the world. The theater of cruelty, which was not designed to be cruel, has found its mirror image in love and sacrifice. I’m no theologian, but who knows? Maybe the fire that took Aaron’s life will provide protection and a pure path – for him, and those for whom he died.
But it’s not enough to hope. Action is needed now, before it’s too late, because fire comes in many forms. It can burn slowly, giving light and warmth. Or it can arise suddenly, unexpectedly, assuming the shape of inescapable justice as it moves among us.Keep ReadingShow Less
Study Ties Abortion Restrictions to 'Significant' Jump in Suicide Rates for Young Women
"This association is robust—and it has nothing to do with politics," said one co-author. "It's all backed by the data."
Dec 28, 2022
With abortion currently inaccessible in over a quarter of U.S. states, peer-reviewed research published Wednesday highlights the impact of cutting off care, revealing that restricted access is linked to increased suicide risk in young women.
Published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, the analysis of targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) laws was conducted by four experts at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).
"Stress is a key contributor to mental health burden and a major driver of increased suicide risk," said study co-author Ran Barzilay, a child-adolescent psychiatrist and neuroscientist at CHOP and Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, in a statement.
"We found that this particular stressor—restriction to abortion—affects women of a specific age in a specific cause of death, which is suicide," added Barzilay. "That's the 10,000-foot view."
"Women who experienced the shock of this type of restrictive legislation had a significant increase in suicide rate."
While the study is based on state-level data from 1974 to 2016, it was unveiled at a time of heightened fear about abortion access—just six months after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Since that June 24 ruling, "trigger" bans have taken effect and anti-choice state legislators have escalated efforts to restrict abortion, blocking millions of people capable of becoming pregnant from seeking care close to home.
"Abortion is currently unavailable in 14 states, and courts have temporarily blocked enforcement of bans in eight others as of December 12, 2022," according to a Guttmacher Institute review from last week.
During the years examined by the Penn-CHOP researchers, 21 states enforced at least one TRAP law.
"We constructed three indices that measure access to reproductive care by looking at the enforcement of state-level legislation," explained lead author Jonathan Zandberg of Penn's Wharton School. "Every time a state enforced a law that was related to reproductive care, we incorporated it into the index."
After examining suicide rates before and after the laws took effect, and comparing them to rates elsewhere and broad trends, the researchers found that "comparatively, women who experienced the shock of this type of restrictive legislation had a significant increase in suicide rate," Zandberg said.
The publication notes that during the period studied, annual rates of death by suicide were 1.4-25.6 per 100,000 women of reproductive age—the researchers focused on those 20-34—and 2.7-33.2 per 100,000 women of postreproductive age, or 45-64.
For reproductive-aged women, the average suicide death rate when no TRAP laws were enforced was 5.5 per 100,000, and enforcement of such a law was associated with a 5.81% higher annual rate—a trend that was not detected among older women.
A statement from the university points out that the researchers "examined another common cause of death, motor vehicle death rates, and saw no effect. Controlling for potential confounders like the economy and political climate did not change the results."
While acknowledging the limitations of their findings, the researchers also stressed how rigorious their methods were.
"This association is robust—and it has nothing to do with politics," said Barzilay. "It's all backed by the data."
Co-author Rebecca Waller of Penn's Department of Psychology stressed that "we're looking at the connection between summary data about causes of death at the state level and policy and politics over many decades."
"Yet, every death represents an individual moment of tragedy," she said. "So, there's clearly an awful lot more that we need to understand about what these findings mean for individual suicide risk."
"Whatever your view is on all of this, it's all over the news. It's everywhere," Waller added. "The women internalizing the stories they hear are the ones who these restrictions will affect the most."
The new findings illustrate just one way abortion restrictions endanger the lives of people capable of pregnancy.
Research released earlier this month by the Commonwealth Fund shows that "compared to states where abortion is accessible, states that have banned, are planning to ban, or have otherwise restricted abortion have fewer maternity care providers; more maternity care 'deserts'; higher rates of maternal mortality and infant death, especially among women of color; higher overall death rates for women of reproductive age; and greater racial inequities across their healthcare systems."
That report argues that in partnership with residents and insurance and medical providers, state leaders can enhance the lives of patients by fighting for more and higher quality maternity care personnel and facilities as well as "by adopting the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid eligibility expansion for low-income adults and extending Medicaid postpartum coverage to one year."
"Increased federal funding for reproductive healthcare, family planning, maternity care, and care delivery system transformations also could mitigate the impact of the Dobbs decision and state abortion bans on people's lives," the publication adds. "State, congressional, and executive branch actions are all needed to protect the health of women and birthing people and ensure optimal and equitable outcomes for mothers and infants."
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.
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