“Suicides across the military have dropped by more than 22 percent this year,” the Associated Press reports, but nobody is willing to offer an explanation.

“Military officials…were reluctant to pin the decline on the broad swath of detection and prevention efforts, acknowledging that they still don’t fully understand why troops take their own lives. And since many of those who have committed suicide in recent years had never served on the warfront, officials also do not attribute the decrease to the end of the Iraq war and the drawdown in Afghanistan.”

“With two months to go in this calendar year, defense officials say there have been 245 suicides by active-duty service members as of Oct. 27. At the same time last year there had already been 316.”

Crossposted at Wonk Wire.