As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about military suicides comes this depressing news from Fort Hood, in Texas — suicides on the base almost doubled from 2011 to 2012.

Details were in a recent article in the Dallas Morning News. Here are excerpts:

The Army post in Central Texas reported that 19 soldiers either killed themselves or were suspected of doing so, pending the results of military investigations. The 2012 total was nearly twice the number of suicides reported at Fort Hood in 2011 and only three less than the record of 22 reported in 2010.

“There are multiple factors that go into suicide,” said Kim Ruocco, 49, the widow of a Marine helicopter pilot who died by suicide in 2005. “There are ones you see and there are ones you don’t see until someone goes into crisis.”

After more than 10 years of war, military families have been under near-constant stress. “We’re asking a lot of our military,” said Ruocco, 49, who lives in Massachusetts. Nearly 20 percent of troops who served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a widely cited study by Rand Corp.

Fort Hood has contributed heavily to the U.S. war effort over the last 11 years. Most of its 46,500 soldiers, including the 1st Cavalry Division, have deployed multiple times to Afghanistan and Iraq.