I'm fairly late to this thread, but it's an interesting point that almost 40% of the suicides last year were from the Reserves. Had I actually followed through with my own, that number would've been 477.

The reserves are kind of... tricky. The active guys give us a lot of hell because we only show up for anywhere between 2-5 days per month for drill before going back to our normal lives, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Most of the guys in my unit are either in school, with mediocore to minimum wage jobs, and there are some who don't work at all. There's probably one or two right now that are struggling financially, might get a couple meals a day, and may not even have a permanent place to call home. The active duty guys on the other hand are GUARANTEED to have full-time income, housing, BAH, food, water, bed, gyms, medical and dental care, allowance for uniforms; the reserves have none of these, and if you want things like medical insurance, you have to pay for it--but certainly worth it than the kind of insurance that most jobs give you. And when you are at drill, you have to put your life on hold so you can go to the field for a few days, and that affects your school and your job; they're legally mandated to allow you to go attend drill, but the opportunities you miss from work, or the midterms and finals you sincerely hope that you can make up for before or after drill, are some big stress factors to consider. The pay is shit, and you certainly have to work harder in 2-4 days out of the month compared to active, because the active guys have Monday to Friday, maybe the occasional weekend to spreadload the work and complete it without too much strain.

For me, I almost killed myself because my long term relationship fell apart--and I had all my eggs in this basket considering we were seriously considering engagement, had no place to live--until my former roommate from college let me sleep on his couch--because my ex and I used to live together, lost my dog, was unemployed for a year before finding a highly dissatisfying temp job, had no direction in life even with a Bachelor's degree, and I felt I couldn't commit to any job avenue because I'd have to go to drill over attending job interviews.

It's not to say active guys have it easier; they're far more likely to deploy for starters, and the stress of dealing with asshat NCOs and bum-fuck ignorant chain of command is a whole new level of its own; I at least get to ignore the idiocy of my chain of command by going home at the end of drill.

Not really sure where I'm going with this post, but I'm not too surprised about reservists committing suicide as likely as the risk of active duty members doing the same. It makes me want to strangle someone when they think that it takes a deployment to a combat zone to get PTSD or become severely depressed; whether you've deployed multiple times or have never set foot on foreign soil, life can still spin you about in the worst kind of ways.