Report: The rush to stem military suicides left prevention programs with some problems, gaps

Report: Military needs new office to stem suicides

WASHINGTON — A new report says the Pentagon needs to establish a new office of suicide prevention to help the military services stem the high rate of self-inflicted deaths among troops.

An independent task force report ordered by Congress says more than 1,100 members of the armed forces killed themselves from 2005 to 2009. It noted sharp increases in such deaths in the Army and Marine Corps, the services most stretched by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report says the services made an extraordinary effort to deal with the crisis, but that in their rush to do so, they developed prevention programs that don’t work as well as they could.

It says a high-level Defense Department office is needed to set suicide prevention strategy across the service branches.