In what was hailed as the Pentagon's first-ever report on military family suicides, the Defense Department said Thursday that 123 spouses and 63 children took their own lives in 2017. According to the inaugural Department of Defense 2018 Annual Suicide Report, the 186 deaths included 122 among active-duty personnel families, 29 among Reserve families and 35 within National Guard families. Seventeen spouses were service members themselves. The report said the calculated suicide rate for family members, which allows for comparison with other populations, was significantly lower than the rate for the general U.S. population in 2017, 6.8 per 100,000 military family members, compared with 14.5 per 100,000 persons. Read more on Military.com.
In a First, Pentagon Releases Data on Military Spouse and Child Suicides
