Suicides last year were the leading cause of death in the Taiwanese armed forces for the second consecutive year, showing inadequate mental health care standards in the military, the National Audit Office said.
The military over the past five years reported 158 suicides, including 97 deaths and 61 attempted suicides, the office said in the annual report for last year.
Suicide has been the top cause of death in the armed forces since 2022, overtaking traffic accidents, it said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
The number of suicides has also increased significantly, with the military reporting 17 incidents from January to April, five more than in the same period last year, the office said.
Economic hardship is believed to have been the cause of 40 of the suicides in the past five years, making it the leading cause of self-harm in the armed forces, it said.
For female military personnel, most of the suicides were due to mental illnesses and difficulties in adapting to life in the armed forces, it added.
The military’s three-tiered mental health program failed to spot 130 of those who were at risk of self-harm, a figure that is equivalent to an 82 percent failure rate, the office said.
Military mental health counselors on the program’s lower tiers flagged about 18 percent of the cases as potential suicide risks, but concluded that nothing was amiss, the office added.
Of the military mental health counselors, only 62 percent held a certificate or degree in a mental health field, it said, adding that the program was understaffed, with large swathes of the military not having the right counselor-soldier ratio of 1 to 500.
For example, only one counselor was available for every 810 service members assigned to the Ministry of National Defense, the office said.
Since service members could not be referred to civilian care without approval from the three tiers of the military mental health system, the latter were sometimes more of a hindrance, rather than a help, it said.
The office urged the military to increase the number of mental health professionals in its program and reduce the red tape blocking access to civilian medical resources.
In response to the office’s findings, the ministry said it would organize a group to assess the effectiveness of the military mental health program.
The group would include civilian mental health experts and Ministry of Health and Welfare officials, the office said.
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