The risk of suicide

From the USA Today;

A record number of active-duty soldiers killed themselves last year, according to The Washington Post.

The paper cites an internal Army study that shows 121 soldiers committed suicide in 2007. That's a 20% increase over the prior year, the Post says.

"The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments," the paper reports. "Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 -- the lowest rate on record -- the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006."

Still not as high as the suicide rate for Maori;

The three-year moving average age-standardised rate of suicide for Maori was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 population in 2003–2005....The three-year moving average age-standardised rate of suicide for Maori males was 28.4 deaths per 100,000 population in 2003–2005, compared with the rate for non-Maori males of 18.4 per 100,000 population, which was significantly lower.

You are more likely to kill yourself if you are Maori, particularly a Maori male, living in New Zealand than if you are on active service in Iraq.