Expect More Military Suicides: Mullen

Expect more servicemen and women to take their own lives in the months ahead, Admiral Mike Mullen warned today, in the wake of four such suicides over the weekend. “I think we are going to see a significant increase in the challenges that we have in terms of our families,” Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at a press breakfast this morning, reports the Boston Globe. “The emergency right now is suicides.”

Troops are returning rapidly from Iraq, but many will have difficulty returning to civilian life, Mullen explained. The weekend saw a glut of such tragedy, with a 24-year-old accounting specialist who’d served in Iraq killing himself Friday, followed by a mechanic and an artillery specialist on Saturday, and an Army sergeant on Sunday. The latter also appears to have shot his wife in a murder-suicide, the Austin American-Statesman reports. (More Adm. Mike Mullen stories.)