Sándor Kalmár
Private Practice, Kecskemét, Hungary
Suicide in the Military. Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009, 210 pages.

The author studies all available data of military suicide cases in Hungary. After a short historical overview, he presents the suicide situation of Hungary, the changes in the problem of suicide within the Hungarian Defense Force in the past decades with special regard to the period after the abolition of obligatory regular army. The data examined shows, that the average suicide rate was decreased between 2005 and 2007 by 31.52% within the Hungarian Defense Forces, while the decrease was less among civilians: 9.67%. After such a great improvement, suicide rate of the military forces became lower than that of civilians. The average suicide rate between 2002 and 2004 within the Hungarian Defense Force was 21.05% higher than the rate of civilians, while it became 8.22% lower between 2004 and 2007. The decrease in the number of suicide cases can be explained by the abolition of obligatory regular army, but the Mentalhygienic Service developed at the Hungarian Defense Force also had a great influence too. This effect is proved by the fact, that suicide rate among non employed military pensioners is still high. These people are not treated by the Mentalhygienic Service of the Hungarian Defense Force. It would be worth utilizing the experiences of the Mentalhygienic Service of the Hungarian Defense Force in the preventing program of the civil population as well. Unfortunatelly today several facts obstruct this, though there are not any conceptual, ideological, political obstruction of it.