What's a little collateral damage when you're fighting for democracy and freedom. Thank you George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for bringing freedom, democracy and safety to Iraq and Afghanistan.
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The surprise here is the use of a gun by women. I would expect that in men but women as I recall tend toward drugs or softer means. Do similar suicide patterns occur in military women from India or another non-western country? I would be interested to see someone consider the interplay between the society we grow up and live in, and the reality of living for many months/several years in combat conditions in a very foreign country.

Do similar suicide patterns occur in military women from India or another non-western country?

Israel, even though it's Western-ish, would also be a useful comparison, as they conscript both men and women and both are likely to see combat. Then again, they're facing threats to their very survival as a country, which would tend to make you a little more convinced that killing people, blowing stuff up, and putting your family through the stresses of a long deployment are necessary and justifiable. The universal draft also creates a sense of camaraderie and shared sacrifice. Both aspects might give them some mental and emotional toughness that is harder to engender in the members (both male and female) of our all-volunteer Armed Forces.

On another note, you sometimes hear that more women than men attempt suicide but that men are generally more successful in carrying it out. If that's true, then there are potentially tens of thousands more female veterans who have attempted suicide or are despondent enough to contemplate it than is captured in this statistic.

The suicide rate in Oregon is extremely high yet the news people refuse to report on the events or the over-all problem for fear that doing so may foster an epidemic.

Its mostly adult, white males between 35 and 55. The surplus segment of our society with values only in salvage, just as an unwanted old car.