Apropos of the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas military base yesterday (allegedly done by a former Afghanistan soldier and Army psychiatrist), The Washington Post’s Ann Scott Tyson has a valuable piece on the wrenching mental health conditions of soldiers who make repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. A couple of statistics that jump out — 30 percent of soldiers who go to Iraq and Afghanistan come back with some type of mental health condition like depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. These unhealthy soldiers are then asked to repeatedly return to battle. Also: while the mass shooting that left 13 dead is, understandably, a huge news story, what’s below the radar is that 10 soldiers this years at Fort Hood have committed suicide.

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