There's a lot of academic literature that supports the claim that reports of suicide in the media lead to an increase in the number of suicides. This is often referred to as "copycat suicide" or "the Werther effect". As a result, journalists and academics are often very careful about they way they publicly discuss suicide attempts. More information can be found here:
The army officials who deny mental health care to soldiers who later completely unpredictably off themselves at a rate higher than combat casualties must have read some of the same literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2094294?uid=3737536&ui...
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/197/3/234.abstract