258 British soldiers died in the 1982 Falklands War against Argentina. A less known statistic is that in the decades following the conflict a reported 264 British Falkland veterans committed suicide. Thus, the Falklands War holds the ignoble but common characteristic causing more British suicides than combat casualties.
The suicide statistics for veterans of the Falklands War and other deployments was the subject of a 2002 lawsuit by British veterans claiming the Ministry of Defense did not adequately care for soldiers with Posttramatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), widely believed to be correlated with suicide.
While data on British Iraq War military suicides is hard to come by. A 2004 Telegraph story reported that 119 soldiers had been evaluated from Iraq due to psychiatric problems and seven soldiers had committed suicide since the start of the war.
Christopher Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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