Army “stands down” for suicide training
I just got my letter from Army Chief of Staff General Odierno announcing that the Army is “standing down” world wide today for suicide prevention training. Associated Press reports;
“The Army has decided that this issue is so important to us that we’re going to devote an entire day … that was otherwise devoted to something else and say `That’s not as important as this,”‘ the Army’s top enlisted man, Sgt. Maj. Raymond Chandler, told a news conference Wednesday.
The Army is the largest of the services, it has the highest number of suicides, and it is the only branch planning the special training Thursday.
For the first seven months of 2012, the Army recorded 116 suicides among active-duty soldiers, officials reported last month. If that pace were maintained through December, the year’s total would approach 200, compared with 167 total in 2011.
There are a couple of excellent stories in the video “Shoulder to shoulder” that’s been linked in my sidebar for several weeks about soldiers who saved their buddies from suicide. I won’t claim to have a silver bullet cure for the rash of suicides this year, but I do know that one path to a cure is saying something to your friends whether you’re thinking about it or if you spot someone who might be thinking about it.
I know that I’ve intervened a few times when I read a comment on the blog that seemed like a warning signal. There’s no one at VA or DoD who is going to look out for us like we do for each other. I feel the loss when I read about soldiers who took their own lives, whether I know them or not, and I’m sure that each of you feels the same way.
It’s time to nip this suicide thing in the bud, and we’re all up to the task at hand. Dakota Meyer talks about his thoughts about succumbing to the demons;
Category: Big Army, Military issues, Veterans Issues
I lost a fellow officer to suicide last January. He was the last person would have suspected of suicide. Wife and two kids. The one takeaway I have is this: Suicide is the result and not a cause. For my friend, the cause was unbearable pain in his life. It presented itself as anger buried in sarcasm. If there was one thing I wish I could have told him before he took his life, it would have been this:
Talk to me. Tell me why you are so angry? Just tell me in whatever words you can find. You don’t owe me anything, but if you are going to take your life, talk to me so I can understand your pain, because if you don’t, we’re all left with questions that cause us unbearable pain.
Just talk. Talking is something you can do. Pulling that trigger, that’s hard, and it should be. But once you pull that trigger, I can’t do anything for and you can’t do anything for you.
The pain means you’re alive. So while you’re alive, talk to me. And take as long as you need.
@AP – THAT is what anyone considering suicide needs to hear. I lost my squad leader to suicide in 1990, and ironically, he would have said the very same thing you wrote, had one of us come to him or displayed the warning signs.
I have a facebook buddy who messaged me yesterday to say that his therapist called yesterday to concel their appointment this afteroon because they both have to go the stand down.
That’s strange. I’m sitting at work right now and nothing about this has come down from my chain of command.
Even us civilian Cubists (civilian form of Fobbits) are involved here in MSCoE-land… (99% of us are retired.)
Good to talk about it in the open.
The last suicide prevention class I attended, the Bn CO addressed the audience first and made an announcement that sounded something like this, “This class is about suicide, the affects it has on those who are left behind, and how to recognize it as leaders. For me, personally, I believe anyone who takes his or her own life is a coward. I encourage you to listen what is presented here and pay close attention so we can ensure our Marines are taken care of.” I was taken aback because the auditorium was FULL of Marines of all ranks, and he knew little about individual’s personal struggles, let alone the depth of pain someone must be in to take such a drastic step. Two weeks later, a PFC was found on the railroad tracks adjacent to the train tracks, who had attended the same brief as I did, but had taken his own life. I didn’t know the lad, and it was tragic loss… but the whole approach the military has taken on the issue has always confounded me. To #1 Adirondack Patriot – you mind if I use that should the need ever arise. Good and powerful stuff that is.
I am speechless from the article, video and comments. All very powerful and helpful.
Tragic, suicides have surpassed those killed on the battlefield for the past few months. Sadly, I don’t think all the vidoes and briefings on earth are going to do anything about the problem. The have been beating this dead horse for the past 3 years and its obviously not helping, its actually getting worse. What the army doesn’t want to talk about is how many of these soldiers that commit suicide were on a cocktail of psych meds prescribed by exhausted and overworked mental health profesionals who just scribble out prescriptions for powerful, mind altering drugs. I’ve seen guys that were having some difficulty re-integrating for the first month or two after getting home from Afghanistan and instead of sitting down and getting through to the root of the problem they write out a couple of scripts for sleeping pills and Seroquil and send them on their way so they can make their next appointment in 10 minutes. I’ve seen stand up, squared away guys turn into straight fucking zombies in a period of weeks after being on all that shit. Guys I’ve deployed with and hung out with for years are suddenly complete strangers. I think psych meds are the root of the problem of this suicide epidemic, no matter how much the army tries to play dumb. How many more mental health professionals could the army hire with just .01% more of the DOD budget? IMO, until this problem is attended to, all the stand downs, the slide shows, vignettes, briefings from the chaplain, and ACE cards in your wallet aren’t going to solve shit.
The comment above was me
@NDS, does no one who writes these scripts understand the side effects when all that chemical crap is ingested? I think you’re right. And the side effects — and cautionary language — should be in large bold type on any prescription. And I mean LARGE type.
If it has to be there for OTC stuff like antihistamines or aspirin, why isn’t it there for prescriptions? I have naproxen from the VA for my arthritis. It’s the prescription dosage of Aleve. The warnings are on the bottle of Aleve, but not on the VA’s pill bottle.
@Ex-PH2, I think they understand to an extent but they have this doctor basically telling them “here, take this shit and everything will be fine.” Even though a lot psych meds have been approved by the FDA for public use, the medical community hasn’t even begun to understand the long term effects of them on brain chemistry, let alone the effects when mixed with multiple other drugs. I’m not a doctor, I’m just an infantryman, but I’ve seen what that shit does to people and it isn’t pretty. Its like they got a non-surgical lobotomy or something. Its a simple process of putting 2+2 together, but unfortunately, more times than not when the government or any agency under it does the math the answer usually isn’t 4
AP: You know what you’re talking about. That’s a great message–and, like most great things–is very simple and plain. No Ph.D is required to, perhaps, save a life.
This is something I have thought a great deal on, in many regards. I wholeheartedly agree with #1 AP.
In a quiet voice from my peaceful little corner of the world, I wish there was a way I could offer help. I know I have the mind for it, just not the means.
[…] down” in the Army September 29th, 2012 In case there are those of you who wondered how that Army-wide stand down the other day for suicide prevention went, the folks at Ranger Up’s Rhino Den sent us a link to Yeti’s post on the […]
I was voluntold in 2008 or 2009 to lead an eight hour block of mando suicide prevention training. I got so sick of the halfassed effort on the part of the big A army, the class ended with a rant from me about how the army doesn’t actually care about you killing yourself, only that you get shuffled out of the service before you succeed. I stand by those sentiments Suicides in the military are a systemic problem and they need to be addressed on a systemic scale, and they aren’t. Kids can make their way through meps with a background that screams that they are a suicide risk if they have a high GT score. Recruits aren’t trained to deal with stress in combat situations any more because it hurt the throughput rates in basic training. AIT training doesn’t make up the slack because they are set up to get soldiers from basic to permanent party, not to fix what basic didn’t. At this point, a line unit has been possibly blue falconed at least three times when it signs a soldier into the unit, and they want to fix things with a one day stand down? What is the fix? If you have suicidal ideations and confide in a battle buddy or your commander, your military career is done. You can’t be trusted with a weapon, and without access to a weapon, you can’t be in the military. For the folk who shouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place because of circumstances outside their control, they may have invested emotionally in the idea along the way that they can make it because the army says they have value. All this makes things worse, not better. The first time I encountered it, the army freaked out over succcessful suicide attemps were up maybe 50 incidents in a year. How little extra effort would have been needed to tighten things down along the line and get those folk into the appropriate help programs they needed? Better question is how many other soldiers were lost and counted in normal… Read more »