This study has not yet been released to the public. I don't subscribe to "Time" so I can't give you a link to that. The study is leaking everywhere and I will later give a fuller opinion.
I watched the "Morning Joe" idiocy linked to. Yes, you are right. I sacrifice myself so that you do not have to watch this 1%er Manhattan spectacle. This show should really be on local TV in NY City. It is something like the two women from the Bronx on SNL who have a skit of such a show.
None of the civilians present had the slightest comprehension of the nature of military life. There wasa lot of whining and phony weepiness about not knowing any soldiers and, of course, alienation. Hammerhead Joe at least had the sense to admit that he knew nothing. Colonel Jack Jacobs was on the program. He tried to explain, but they all "mooed" at him restively.
As Jacobs said at the end in the "What have we learned today" moment, the salient feature of this report seems to be that 52% of the successful suicides in the last few years are by people who have never deployed overseas.
Ground combat veterans who "off" themselves are sympathetic figures. I have know only one VN vet who did this and it was many years later. His hand shook at the end and he made a mess of it. An M 1911A1 can only make up for so much for a bad aiming point. Why combat vets who do this are so driven is a mystery to me but I respect the personal decision.
That leaves the 52%. In the study interviews. the unsuccessful seemed to say that they couldn't handle the stress of military life. Well, I was an enlisted man and I was an officer in a much less considerate time in the peacetime Army as well as in combat. It was not all that difficult. There was a lot of physical stuff, running up and down, doing PT and walking long distances carrying a lot of weight. People were and are required to live by rules not their own (at least at first). They are required to work when they are told, clean their quarters, dress as they are told and not talk back.
I suspect that this is the kind of stress that kills a lot of the 52%. I see a lot of young people who have not been "grown" to handle such a life. They are the kinds of kids who will sit on their a---s while their mother cleans their room and who will not carry the groceries for her unless they are bribed. Of course, she deserves this treatment for letting them behave this way.
I will read more of the study when it is available. pl
