Last week Michelle Obama made her first major trip as First Lady, to visit with military families at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America she said she chose the occasion to highlight an issue near and dear to her heart, the struggles of our nation’s military families.

OBAMA: You know, this, this is an important issue for me. And it started taking shape on the campaign trail. I, I think I was like most Americans, pretty oblivious to the life of, of military families. Sort of taking it for granted. I just assumed that if we care about our troops and we send them to war, that naturally, we’d be taking care of their families. … You know, these are people who are willing to send their loved ones off to, perhaps give their lives, the ultimate sacrifice. But yet, they’re living back at home on food stamps. It’s, it’s not right. And it’s not where we should be as a nation.

Of course, this is the sort of thing one would expect a First Lady to say, especially considering that, back when he was a candidate, Barack Obama was criticized for his lack of military service.

Still, regardless of motivation, Mrs. Obama’s words are most welcome. Despite all the blather about supporting out troops since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq U.S. military personnel and their families, a much more important aspect of the military, since the inception of the All Volunteer Force, still live largely in a world apart from the larger civilian world.

But Mrs. Obama might want to note that although the families of those on active duty often have it tough those on active duty often suffer even more. Consider some of the news in the past month.

In Kentucky Fort Campbell officials struggling to stem a recent increase in military suicides hope family members will be able to spot signs that soldiers may be depressed and hesitant to seek help from the Army.

Eight Fort Campbell soldiers have killed themselves since the beginning of the year. Suicides in the Army have increased yearly since 2004 as soldiers deal with longer and repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials at Fort Campbell declared a “state of emergency,” and the Army has also made suicide prevention training mandatory for soldiers and leaders to combat the trend.

Many soldiers at Fort Campbell have been deployed three or four times since the war began. Some studies show the length of combat exposure can be linked to suicide, said Dr. Matthew Friedman, executive director of the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Specialists estimate 12 percent to 20 percent of Iraq vets and 6 percent to 11 percent of Afghanistan vets have PTSD.

According to figures obtained by the Associated Press, there has been a steady increase in suicides since 2003, totaling 450 active duty soldiers, with the highest numbers occurring in the past year. Military suicides vary considerably between branches of the service, with the Army and Marine Corps frequently reaching the highest annual rates.

The Army is now investigating 24 suspected suicides that occurred in January 2009, compared with five during the same month in 2008.

In fact, so serious is this that the Army has finally gone public on this issue. In October 2008, the Army announced a five-year, $50 million collaborative study with the National Institute of Mental Health to address suicide. In a rare public admission of the urgency of the problem, Dr. S. Ward Cassells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, stated in the New York Times, “We’ve reached a point where we do need some outside help.”

How bad might this get? Remember that the Army only began keeping records on suicides in 1980, a policy likely fueled by the cascade of attempted and successful suicides by Vietnam veterans. In 1983, with the introduction of the diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual, the military and VA began, finally, to acknowledge the debilitating effects of this combat-related trauma reaction. Increased risk of suicide is among the many symptoms of the half-million Vietnam veterans diagnosed with chronic PTSD. Using the most conservative estimates, there may be as many as 75,000 active duty military or recently discharged veterans with PTSD or significant symptoms of PTSD, according to psychologist Alan Peterson of the University of Texas. Peterson is a researcher with a multidisciplinary consortium recently awarded a $25 million Department of Defense grant to study behavioral treatments for PTSD.

And if psychological injuries aren’t enough how about neurological ones? On March 5 USA Today reported that up to 360,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans may have suffered brain injuries. Among them are 45,000 to 90,000 veterans whose symptoms persist and warrant specialized care.

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