Suicide rates among veterans and soldiers in India & the US

Suicide is the leading cause of death, surpassing combat deaths, in the US & Indian armies which are of comparable size (1.1 million India; 1.3 million US). The US has 22 veteran suicides every day. That’s roughly 8,000 a year which is considered underreported. There are also about 200 to 250 suicides a year among active duty soldiers.

The Indian army has an average of 100 suicides every year among soldiers deployed in Kashmir with no report about suicides after discharge from duty.

You can’t draw any conclusions with insufficient data but it’s likely that suicide rates among Indian army veterans are substantial, given the human rights crimes they commit in Kashmir. Maybe they aren’t 8,000 a year but it’s almost certain they are sky high.

One Indian military publication suggested the liberal leave benefits, high standards of discipline, esprit-de-corps,”good & caring officers” were the secret of low suicide rates in the Indian army. But if they actually bothered to do the math, they would find that committing human rights atrocities is just as hard on Indian soldiers as it is on Americans.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the suffering those soldiers leave behind.