Andy Rowell, 28 January 2008 

Early last year, a 22 year old American soldier, Guardsman Michael Gwinn, fatally shot his wife, Patricia and then himself. The murder-suicide was witnessed by the couple's children, aged two and six months, who were left with their dead parents for hours before being found.  

Gwinn had come back from the Iraq war traumatized, telling his father how he could still see headless bodies and feel the shock-waves of bombs. “I think that the military experience had a lot to do with it,” his father said. “Mike was not like that.”

Gwinn’s story is just another tragic case of a growing mental health epidemic in America, caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It is a tragic story and one that the US authorities, still in a state of denial, are struggling to admit, let alone cope with.

The war has had a devastating effect on the mental health of American soldiers. The nature of the fighting in the country, much of it at close quarters and with no “traditional front line” has amplified the trauma. Instead of recognising the signs of trouble, many soldiers have been sent back for further tours of duty which has only made the situation worse.

Within five months of the invasion in 2003, rising soldier suicides and psychiatric problems provoked the US army to send a team of mental health experts to Iraq. Their report provided what should have been the first of many warning signals. American forces in Iraq were killing themselves at a rate three times greater than what is statistically normal for the Army. Moreover one-third of all soldiers, who had been evacuated for psychiatric reasons, had “suicide-related behaviors”.

Having identified the seeds of a huge problem, the military denied what was causing it. The 2003 report concluded that suicide “among OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] deployed soldiers is occurring for the same reasons typically found among Soldier-suicides”. These reasons were insufficient or underdeveloped life coping skills; marital, legal, or financial problems; chronic substance abuse and mood disorders. So soldiers were killing themselves because of the trauma in Iraq, yet, for some inexplicable reason, Iraq had nothing to do with their trauma.

In October 2004, the army released a new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reporting that one in six of all Iraq veterans suffered from depressions or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, known as PTSD. As the occupation has continued so too has the silent epidemic. In April 2006, the Army released new statistics showing that the suicide rate had continued to climb.

Buried deep in its report, the most often reported combat stressors included “seeing dead bodies or human remains, being attacked or ambushed, and knowing someone who was seriously injured or killed”.  A spokesperson for the Army said: “We're not alarmed.” The army also dismissed the idea that Iraqi or Afghanistan combat was to blame.

In March last year, the Journal of the American Medical Association published new figures that claimed that one in three American soldiers would experience "clinically serious stress reaction symptoms".

Three months later, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health finally acknowledged “daunting and growing” psychological problems among American troops. Nearly 40 percent of soldiers, a third of Marines and half of National Guard members were suffering serious mental health issues. They also reported “fundamental weaknesses” in the U.S. military's approach to psychological health.

In August last year, new figures revealed that 2006 saw the highest rate of military suicides in 26 years  Despite this, Pentagon studies still haven't found a connection between soldier suicides and war. “It is baffling, if not astonishing, that these military psychiatrists, supposed experts in combat-related stress, have so normalized war that it is overlooked as the source of the disease they have been sent to diagnose, that its horror can be thus discounted and its psychic effects rendered invisible”, argues Penny Coleman, author of “Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War.” Coleman’s husband, a veteran of the Vietnam War, killed himself.

In November 2007, the American broadcaster CBS aired a five-month investigation into the “hidden epidemic,” of soldiers who survived the trauma of war in Iraq and Afghanistan only to kill themselves in the peaceful surroundings at home. The stories are tragic. In June 22 2004, nearly a year after coming home from the war, Marine Reservist, Jeff Lucey hanged himself with a garden hose in his family's basement.  Before he died, he told his parents of the time he had been ordered to kill two Iraqis in the desert, who were standing just five feet from him. “The blood splattered all over. And then he shot the second one. One was in the eye, and one was in the throat,” recalls his father. The military dismiss his story.

It was Lucey’s father who found his dead son and the suicide note: “Dear Mom and Dad, I want you to know that I loved you both and still do but the pain of life was too much for me to deal with.” Kevin Lucey blames Iraq and PTSD: “We want people to be sensitive to the fact that these people can come home from Iraq, looking OK but be very, very damaged.” says Kevin Lucey. “PTSD is like a cancer that lays dormant and then explodes.”

What CBS found was that there seemed to be little support for veterans returning home. The American military did not seem to be monitoring the situation or looking to see just how big the problem was. So they decided to find out for themselves. CBS asked all 50 states for their suicide data, based on death records, for veterans and non-veterans, dating back to 1995.

Forty-five states returned information that is truly shocking. For example in 2005, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 every week, or 17 a day. When seventeen US soldiers are killed in Baghdad, it makes international news. When 17 kill themselves quietly and tragically, it makes no news at all.

Dr. Steve Rathbun, an acting head of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department at the University of Georgia, who examined the CBS data found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-veterans.

Now more evidence has emerged of the silent cancer eating veterans in America. Earlier this month, an investigation by the New York Times found tragically that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are not just killing themselves, but others.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing, or were charged with one, after their return from war. The Times reporters found a trail of newspaper headlines that spoke of lives in desperate trouble: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. Often those killed were the people closest to the soldiers. About a third of the victims were wives, girlfriends, fathers, children or other relatives. The stories are harrowing. One veteran shot dead his father, another battered his baby to death, a third stabbed his girl-friend 71 times, a fourth shook his one month old baby to death, a fifth disemboweled his girlfriend then killed himself.  

The Times’ investigation found that the overwhelming majority of these young men, unlike most civilian murderers, had no criminal history. Their only crime had been to serve their country in Iraq.  One former soldier, Joshua Pol, who was charged with killing someone under the influence of alcohol whilst driving, told a judge “To be honest with you, I really wish I had died in Iraq.”

Just like with suicides, the Pentagon does not keep track of such killings. They could be the tip of a huge mental health epidemic. Over 100,000 veterans have so far been diagnosed with mental disorders, 52,000 with PTSD, and 49,000 with substance abuse.

US Marine Lucas Borges, who served in Iraq, developed an addiction to the drug ether. In 2004, on returning to the US, he killed five others whilst driving under the influence of the drug. The families of the dead are now suing the US government, maintaining that the military “had a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent Borges from harming others.”

The US government is predictably trying to get the claim dismissed. It is a government that has systematically failed to look after its soldiers. It is a government who asked its young men to go to war and serve their country.

But now it tries to forget them. As they return home haunted and traumatized they are further victims of this senseless war. And who should they blame for this growing mental health crisis? The Commander in Chief of the US Forces: George W. Bush.