As the military focused on fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over nearly a decade, senior leaders have failed to track reckless behavior and monitor alcohol and drug abuse among soldiers back home, said an army report.
"Because of everything we're doing, we have not paid the attention we need to high-risk behavior," General Peter Chiarelli, the US Army's vice chief of staff, told a news conference.
Senior officers had "rightly prioritized the number-one thing that they were going to do is to prepare their soldiers to go into harm's way." But the army needed to improve "garrison leadership" at US bases and take steps to stop rising suicide rates, he said.
The general said "it's time for the army to take a hard look at itself, to sit down and say, okay, what are those things that came lower on our priority list that we need to reinstitute, reinforce and start doing to get at this problem?"
The report, titled Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention, is the result of a 15-month effort to better understand the steady increase in suicides, which have alarmed commanders.