It is unbelievably shocking and sad knowing that statistics like the one in the picture to the left exist. The U.S. military released that statistic that 434 reported suicides in 2010. Which was more than soldiers who died in combat. I wonder, why is this story going unreported when suicides including Air Force and Marines 468, as apposed to soldiers who died in combat in 2010 which was 462? 
    Blogger Cord Jefferson wrote about these numbers in GOOD stating "While many suicide victims are indeed afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after facing heavy combat in the Middle East, many more have never even been deployed. Of the 112 guardsmen who committed suicide last year, more than half had never even left American soil."     I was stunned after reading that quote. After reading these stats I know, many of you including myself may automatically assume that a lot of soldiers commit suicide due to seeing some horrible things on the battlefield and experiencing Post Traumatic Stress because that's pretty much a given. But the fact that some of these soldiers had never even left America raises questions. Why would soldiers who had never even seen a battleground, commit suicide? According to Marine Jess Goodell her platoon had about half a dozen suicides. “The suicide notes, she said, almost always cited hazing.”If hazing is the problem, then why isn't something done about this? Why is this trend continuing and who's gonna do something to stop it?
A lot of people also say that the suicides may be caused by abuse of drugs usually prescribed to mental health patients after war to help with post traumatic stress. If that is so then why don't we push these soldiers to get help instead of giving them these medications that can possibly make their conditions worse?

    All questions that I'm pretty sure we all want the answers to. I feel that this is something that is not really talked about too much, because of the fact that it hits home for so many people in the military, air force, etc and people who have loved ones who are soldiers  But something really needs to be done about this. There should be more places to go and more people to push these soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress to go and get help and recover and there should be someone to report this supposed hazing to without any judgement or getting accused of "ratting someone out."  We need to support the men and women of our military that serve us everyday, because they are there for us, so we need to be there for them. This is a topic that I feel very strongly about and I along with I'm sure many other people feel something should be done to solve this problem and bring those numbers way down.

Sources:
(Pictures, internet):
http://www.designboom.com/art/sebastian-errazuriz-american-kills/?old_id=11233
http://www.flickr.com/photos/restoredemocracy/3918021044/

(Quotes & facts, internet):
http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/number-soldiers-committing-suicide-reaches-record-high
http://www.good.is/posts/more-us-soldiers-killed-themselves-than-died-in-combat-in-2010
http://current.com/groups/news-blog/93597283_more-troops-commit-suicide-than-die-in-combat.htm