LONDON - More British service personnel have killed themselves since 1984 than have died in combat, Action on Armed Violence has discovered.
Overall, the British military has suffered 802 combat deaths since 1984 following hostile action in Northern Ireland, Gulf War One, Balkans, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Iraq.This compares to 905 suicides whilst in service.
Military suicides have generally fallen over the last 40 years. However, in 2021, the MOD noted that “in the last five years there was an increase in the rate of suicide among Army males from six per 100,000 in 2014 to 15 per 100,000 in 2018.”
This revelation comes as new data emerges that the percentage of British Army service personnel who have been medically discharged for mental and behavioural disorders has increased some 318% in a decade, it has been revealed.
Overall, in a decade the proportion of Tri-service discharges – Royal Navy, Army and Air Force – for mental health concerns have collectively also risen by some 245%.
The marked rise in mental health-related discharges was highlighted in a reply to a parliamentary question by Owen Thompson, the Scottish National Party MP. The Ministry of Defence released figures that showed in 2012/13, some 263 of 2,359 service personnel discharged from the armed forces were for mental health issues – 11%. In 2021/22, 38% of all discharges were for such issues – 505 of 1,321 discharges.
In terms of actual troop numbers, this was an increase of 92% – some 242. In the same period the total number of troops discharged for all reasons went down from 2,359 in 2012/3 to 1,038 in 2021/2.
A decade ago, some 11% of medical discharges in the Army were for mental health reasons, with 10% and 15% in the Navy and RAF respectively. In 2021/2, this had risen to 46%, 26% and 43% respectively.
The fact that almost half of all recent discharges today in the Army are for mental health reasons possibly reflects a fact that a decade ago ongoing overseas land conflicts meant discharges for physical injury from combat were more likely.
A report this year by King’s Centre for Military Health Research on the mental health of the UK Armed Forces found that there had been a moderate increase in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in recent years in the forces, mainly amongst ex-service personnel.
