The people of the "greatest generation" were raised during the depression and I would think that their expectations were much lower. Life had taught them that hardship was just part of the deal and also that individual life had no guarantees. Children now, and this includes my generation, have not for the most part suffered anything close to those kind of conditions and their expectations of life are much different. I know that is not the whole answer but I think it certainly plays a part. I know my father never took anything for granted and seemed to have a different value system then my brother and I. He passed it along to some extent but I think that a lot is lost in translation to those who have not experienced such deprivations.Speaking as a veteran, I have to wonder why it is that our troops are having so much trouble with PTSD - especially why we're having so many suicides. Is it because of the constant combat? My father's generation produced infantrymen who fought continuously for years after Normandy, came home after the war and went back to their lives. Many of them lived with their memories of war and did not talk about them to their families (one way of "de-stressing" a situation). Yes, there were cases of "combat fatigue", but not nearly as many, in comparison, as what we appear to be suffering today. Is it multiple deployments? Seems to me that the majority of PTSD is occurring in enlisted and junior NCOs (a conjecture I've taken from training films and documentaries). So is our younger generation of soldiers lacking something in their makeup that makes them more vulnerable to the psychoses that make suicide seem inviting, or is it easy access to ameliorative drugs which, once taken, cumulatively lead further down the road into suicidal depression? I really don't know, but what I think I DO know is that my grandfather's generation dealt with the horrors of mass deaths and destruction in WWI without collapsing into suicidal depression; my father's generation managed to get through WWII largely intact; most Vietnam veterans went on to live productive lives, although there were more widely publicized instances of veterans being unable to cope with their experiences. And now, although we have admittedly been at war for over 10 years, it hasn't been continuous for our troops; it hasn't been any more traumatizing in terms of casualties taken than other conflicts, yet we have a wave of suicides of troops (although the rate of suicides among our troops isn't higher than the civilian average). The only place I've heard of where waves of suicides would take place is in the French Foreign Legion, and that was attributed to troops not getting enough combat.
Now I'm not drawing any particular conclusions nor making any inferences about this phenomenon, but it does seem strange to me that it should be happening and I can't help but wonder what are the particular circumstances which are causing it to occur.