> Crude mortality rates are lower among U.S. military members than their civilian counterparts; service members must be healthy when they enter service and deaths from illnesses are relatively infrequent.
Suicide rates for veterans is on the high end, but comparable to other highly physical professions. Adjusted for age and gender, the suicide rate among veterans is 50% higher than for the population as a whole: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/suicide-rate.... That's on the high end, but not "high" in absolute terms: https://www.registerednursing.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11.... (Scroll down to the chart showing suicide rates by profession for men versus women.) At 40-45 per 100,000, male veterans are about as likely to commit suicide as those in the arts and entertainment and installation/maintenance fields, and less likely than those in construction/resource extraction.
My stepdad, my next door neighbor, and 3 of my friends all have some kind of long term chronic injury caused by military service.
In fact I only know 1 guy well who's ex military who doesn't have at least a moderately severe problem related to his service.
Military service is either a noble sacrifice, or it's a good job. It can't be both simultaneously.
There may be a "cohort" effect. See this tweet for an example of this happening in the UK: https://twitter.com/ProfLAppleby/status/1161940914308300801?...
If this is happening it's potentially really worrying, because risk usually increases with age. So we'd see an increase in rates of death as this high risk group ages into a higher risk group.
The GI bill paying for college is a big benefit of service, but staying in as an officer can also be a great living.
OTOH, lots of people don't have my fortunate background and loving but poor parents can only do so much. Housing and food being taken care of and a paycheck on top is a very good incentive if the other choice is to be a "burden" on your family for another few years...
Not gambling health or life is only possible in a very privileged setting. Those not in it might actually be making a very wise choice.
There's lots of regular work, maintenance, staffing some random base overseas etc
Besides, military service changes you. It gives you perspective you will never get anywhere else.
2 have PTSD, one severe. The one with severe PTSD also got to spend 6 months in a hospital after being shot out of the air in a conflict that we are theoretically not involved in.
Given their other options, military service might have been a good thing. But the odds of PTSD or injury are much, much higher than I would like.
My sample size is thousands of times yours.
The odds are very low.
The odds are very high for post-9/11 veterans (and higher the more of their period of service is post-9/11 within that group), who are more likely to have been deployed and seen combat than veterans of earlier eras (both because of optempo and organizational changes that have increased the teeth to tail ratio of uniformed services as support functions have been moved to contracted support.)
There are ample actual studies of this, we don't need to rely on the “sample size” of competing anecdotal reports.
If you have current tooth-to-tail estimates, they'd be interesting to see.
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-ins...
My nephews serve as examples. Their non-combat roles were heavy construction, setting up communication networks, and airplane mechanic. However all three actually saw combat. 2 wound up with PTSD. And one wound up seriously injured when the plane that was delivering him to a secret mission got shot down en route.
In fact according to some estimates, the prevalence of PTSD among veterans of the Iraq war exceeds the fraction who were supposedly in combat roles.
PTSD is the easiest diagnosis to get through the VA, and thus it is rife with fraud. As a result, it is quite difficult to get anything approaching accurate or useful numbers for it.
It sounds like you're one of the ideal ones for your line of work, though; brains that are less susceptible to stress damage are rare. It's why not everyone is fit to become a police officer or give talks in front of big crowds. Others have an adrenaline sensitivity or a panic groove etched so deeply in their brains that they'll forget their names if you talk to them when they don't expect it.
I'm also assuming you entered the military voluntarily. There's a predisposition for certain brains to take on and thrive in certain careers. As a DWB friend of mine put it about the career mercs he treated, "They aren't psychopaths, just real mean sons of bitches."
You don't have to like people who aren't built as tough as you, but that doesn't mean they're faking.
The vast majority of the people in the military are never exposed to anything at all. They do a job and they get paid for it. They’re no more likely to develop ptsd than the local grocer, plumber or electrician. Many of them are exactly a grocer, plumber, or electrician with a military ID card. They’re not “Mercs” any more than the local grocer...
Everyone on active duty today entered voluntarily as well.
I retired last year.
I deployed to Afghanistan multiple times.
I’m literally someone who experienced the life you’re trying to tell me about. Your studies are mostly bullshit written to drive an agenda.
It could be that that's true of of a variety of scientific studies from diverse sources with no reason to have common agenda, or it could be that that's just true of your unsubstantiated pseudonymous anecdotal ranting in an internet discussion board.
Again, btdt. I don't need a think tank to write a paper to tell me how the military works.
You bring up another excellent reason to avoid military service. I'm sure there are plenty more.
Given those risks, I can't see how the military is a good option.