A senior IDF officer from the Manpower directorate referred to the rise in suicides in the IDF and claimed that the numbers are still low in comparison to foreign armies which publish numbers of suicides.
The officer said that "the army has become statistically the safest place for youth. We assign soldiers to their friends in trouble in order to accompany and assist them and we have added more counselling officers."
She added that "if in the past most of the suicides were immigrants, at present there are no particular characteristics. Most suicides do not occur during training but most will do it in their first year of IDF service."