The US military has reached its highest suicide rate in 83 years.
Statistics from the Pentagon’s Suicide Prevention Bureau show that suicide deaths among US troops are at an all-time high.
Newly released figures from the Pentagon’s Suicide Prevention Bureau show that US military death toll in 2021 is at its highest level since before World War II. .
The total number of suicides among US troops was also the highest in 20 years, according to the Task Press website. In 2021, there were 176 confirmed suicides in the military. This is a slight increase from the 174 confirmed suicides in 2020. In 2019, this figure was 145.
Overall, the suicide rate in 2021 was 36.18 per 100,000 troops. This is the highest rate since 1938, according to a 2019 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which analyzes military suicide rates from 1819 to 2017.
In the Army Reserve and the National Guard, the Reserve Division saw 45 suicide deaths in 2021, a slight increase from the previous year.
Last year, there were 101 suicide deaths in the National Guard, four fewer than in 2020. The suicide rate in the Army Reserve was 24.4 per 100,000 and 29.92 per 100,000 in the National Guard.
