From the BBC:
More British soldiers and veterans took their own lives in 2012 than died fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan over the same period.
BBC Panorama learned that 21 serving soldiers killed themselves last year, along with 29 veterans. The Afghanistan death toll was 44, of whom 40 died in action...
The MoD said that rates of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the serving military were lower than comparative rates in the civilian population.*
Ho hum, those figures don't appear to be adjusted for relative numbers, i.e. there are far more ex-soldiers than serving soldiers, and far more civilians than both groups added together, but let's run with it.
We also happen to know that the most dangerous lines of work are agriculture, mining and construction (I'm not sure in what order - is there a separate category for cow-related deaths?), with a higher risk of being killed than among serving soldiers.
So let's rank those in order starting with most dangerous:
Agriculture - industrial accident
Civilian population - suicide
Serving and ex-soldiers - suicide
Serving soldiers - killed on active service**
Somehow that doesn't look right to me, but maybe it is. The other point being that we just do not look after our ex-soldiers properly - they just get turfed out in the prime of life and told to fend for themselves.
* That's their story and they are sticking to it.
** Allegedly, one-third of those deaths are accidental, however that's defined.
