IDF suicide statistics revealed: 37 percent are immigrants, most at start of their service

The report studied IDF suicides and the steps taken to prevent them, while also investigating programs being implemented by the U.S. Department of Defense to prevent suicides in the U.S. Army. The report was prepared at the request of Hadash MK Dov Khenin.

The rate of IDF suicides is considerably lower than that of the U.S. Army — 10.6 per 100,000 soldiers, compared to the American ratio of 16.7. But while data on U.S. Army suicides are published annually in a systematic and comprehensive fashion, Israeli data is lacking. The report criticizes the defense establishment’s lack of transparency with regard to suicide statistics, which are not publicized. Nor is there any information readily available regarding IDF anti-suicide programs. The report’s authors noted they had great difficulty getting information and at one point had to get the Knesset legal bureau involved in order to obtain it.

The 49-page document succeeds in drawing a profile of the suicidal soldier. Based on data from 2007-2012, it emerges that most soldiers who commit suicide have spent less than a year in the army, with 20 percent having been in service less than six months. The overwhelming majority — 82 percent — of suicides were conscripts doing their compulsory service, though 12 were standing army soldiers and 10 were reservists. Of the 124, only one was doing his mandatory service with the Israel Police.

Eight times as many male soldiers took their own lives as female soldiers, a ratio not much different from the suicide rates in the general population, though as the report notes, there are more men than women in the army, they serve longer and more of them are in combat roles, which are more difficult and demanding. Fifty-seven of the suicides served in front-line units (on the borders or in combat or combat-support roles), while 66 served in non-combat units.

Of those soldiers who committed suicide, 70 were native-born Jews and eight were Muslim or Druze. Over a third of the suicides were immigrants: 25 had been born in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, 10 in Ethiopia and another 10 were born elsewhere.

Most of the suicides shot themselves to death using their personal weapons, with 103 soldiers committing suicide this way. Sixteen killed themselves by hanging. The others used other methods, including one who overdosed on pills.

In the military there are clear procedures for dealing with a soldier whom commanders believe might do himself harm or who has a “suicidal background,” i.e., he had previously tried to harm himself. His commanders must block the soldier’s access to weapons, and two soldiers at the same rank as the problematic soldier are assigned to keep an eye on him. Such a soldier will be assigned a weapon again only by the order of a commander at the rank of lieutenant-colonel or higher, after the soldier is evaluated by a mental health officer.

Because guns were the dominant suicide tool, in 2006 the IDF significantly reduced the number of soldiers permitted to take their weapons home with them. This decision was made not only to prevent suicides, but to prevent theft of army-issue weapons. It did, however, lead to a 40 percent drop in suicides: According to a study presented at a conference on suicide this past May by the head of the clinical branch of the IDF Mental Health Department, Lt.-Col. Dr. Keren Ginat, the annual number of suicides averaged 28 between 2003 and 2005, but dropped to an average of 16.5 in 2007 and 2008. The study also showed that before the weapons restrictions, an average of 10 soldiers annually shot themselves to death over the weekend, while in the years after the decision, the annual weekend suicide average dropped to three.

According to data from the last six years, 72 soldiers committed suicide while with their unit (about 58 percent), while the others did so elsewhere. According to Ginat, the army is debating whether to toughen the regulations governing access to weapons during military service.

Research and literature presented in the report suggest that the profile of a soldier who commits suicide is different that that of a soldier who merely tries to commit suicide. According to the doctoral research of Maj. Leah Shelef, who heads the Israel Air Force’s Mental Health Clinic, in 2009 there were 188 suicide attempts, a third of them by women. Shelef noted that the army’s “suicide watch” is sometimes exploited by soldiers. The Knesset research center report quotes Shelef’s study, in which she wrote, “In the military, suicidal language is being used more and more by soldiers to get quicker attention or easier conditions.”

After examining 30 suicide attempts in the Air Force in 2005, Shelef found that while the soldiers reported they’d attempted suicide out of distress, the professionals claimed the soldiers did so to get their commanders to intervene in determining their terms of service.

Despite all this, it turns out that the IDF does not collect data on suicide attempts. When requesting such information the research center was told that “the Personnel Directorate does not collect information on suicide attempts, since this is purely medical information.”

The report criticizes the fact that information on military suicides or suicide prevention programs is not accessible to the public. There is no such information on any of the IDF websites, and when the research center asked whether “there is a designated body responsible for the issue of soldier suicides,” it never received an answer. Information about suicide prevention appears only on an internal IDF website, to which only IDF soldiers have access. Nor did the IDF respond to researchers’ questions about identifying suicidal recruits at the early stage of the draft process.

By contrast, in 2011 a suicide prevention office was established in the bureau of the U.S. defense secretary, and its budget in 2013 is $5.5 million.