America's North Shore Journal

CNN has a piece up titled Suicides up among U.S. soldiers

The Army plans to release the data publicly on Thursday, CNN learned from Army officials. The numbers have not previously been released, despite repeated CNN requests for data covering the past seven months.

That’s odd, since I’ve already written two posts on the topic. Of course, this is just Army, not all services. Based on CNN’s numbers, I calc

Rates of Change:

2005 to 2006 – +14.7% Deployed – +20.0%
2004 to 2005 – +31.3% Deployed – +92.3%
2003 to 2004 – -15.2% Deployed – -50.0%

Percentages distort the presentation when the numbers are so small. Let’s look, rather, at the numbers for the active duty military as a whole.

Here’s the overall rates and numbers:

Please note that active duty suicide rates and numbers are at near record lows.