Military suicide
Chief Tango sends us a link to the New York Times which discusses what one group of Marines did in reaction to a number of suicides among their mates when they came back from war.
“Real talk, guys, let’s make a pact, right here,” Travis Wilkerson said. “I don’t want to go to any more funerals. Let’s promise to reach out and talk. Get your phones out, put my number in. Call me day or night. I’m not doing this again.”
I’ve been saying for years that the answer to the scourge of suicides among veterans is inside each of us, there are no silver bullets, so to speak. No amount of lectures in our units for quarterly sensitivity training check marks on your company records, the VA is going to try to counsel veterans and they’ll pump you full of drugs that may or may not help. But the real answer is in our hearts.
He sat down with a therapist, a young woman. After listening for a few minutes, she told him that she knew he was hurting, but that he would just have to get over the deaths of his friends. He should treat it, he recalled her saying, “like a bad breakup with a girl.”
The comment caught him like a hook. Guys he knew had been blown to pieces and burned to death. One came home with shrapnel in his face from a friend’s skull. Now they were killing themselves at an alarming rate. And the therapist wanted him to get over it like a breakup?
Mr. Bojorquez shot out of his seat and began yelling. “What are you talking about?” he said. “This isn’t something you just get over.”
He had tried getting help at the V.A. once before, right after Mr. Markel’s funeral, and had walked out when he realized the counselor had not read his file. Now he was angry that he had returned. With each visit, it appeared to him that the professionals trained to make sense of what he was feeling understood it less than he did.
No one understands what we’ve experienced as well as another veteran, irrespective of the war that they served in. That’s why in our little community here at TAH, we have veterans of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, veterans of the Beirut bombing, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, and the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Being a combat veteran is always the same.
I learned that after my service when I read every first-person account I could find about the Civil War. I get in email exchanges with some of you folks when you reach out for a chat. I can’t tell you how many emails I get from lurkers who thank me for the blog because we’ve talked them back from the ledge without even realizing that’s what we were doing. I guess understanding that veterans aren’t alone in their experiences is the One Big Thing That Counts;
After swearing off the V.A., Manny Bojorquez turned increasingly to friends for support. Late-night calls and texts with guys from the battalion seemed to help more than therapy ever did.
I guess that’s why these Medal of Honor recipients got together to make this video, because they understand that;
Category: Veterans Issues
This rate of suicides after Vietnam was the reason Vietnam vets demanded drop-in centers from the VA, where they could get together in groups and talk about it.
Unless those shrinks have been there in the thick of warfare, they have no clue, no frame of reference.
Drugs are NOT the answer.
If you’ve been there/done that, no explanation is necessary.
If you haven’t been there/done that, no explanation is enough.
Great article Jonn.
Senior officers in the wardroom and senior enlisted leaders are responsible for their people. Further, we collectively as members of a very exclusive occupation own this issue and therefor can deal with it more effectively.
It was termed “intrusive leadership” in the mid 2000’s by a Sixth Fleet Admiral after a suicide of a young Sailor. We must everything about our people!
We own this! Not the press, VA and or politicians.
Your correct Master Chief. In
our community it’s small and we are able to do that because we use small unit leadership and team building method’s also. The one thing with this is who check’s the checkers? We have lost some good senior leaders because they were good and “intrusive leadership” but NO one was intrusive on them and one day here next day not. This work’s good when in but when your out on your own and know were to turn that is when thing’s get bad.
As a platoon chief I would get guy’s together we would just talk then I would have SQD Leaders do it at their level and so on we do thing’s in threes so it would go all the way down to the rifle teams. This worked well we knew when guy’s were in the funk and try to help out. As for me the SQD Leaders the 3 of them and my Right guide would get me in room and do small talk with me and I believed that helped me. This was the first time we got back from OIF 1 and they are the same guy’s I deployed with so all could relate. The problem comes is we always reorg for the next deployment so you may not have the same guy’s all the time but you can still team build and know each other.
Here’s another one. We as Military do not just do combat & combat support missions. There are Humanitarian and Natural Disasters and Civil Humanitarian missions that will give the same stress that combat can do. Katrina, Earth quake in Pakistan and Haiti and Japan for a few. Civil Humanitarian missions in Africa and South Central America so Military Mission in general will put stress on any one it is how to help people handle and process what hey have done and accomplished. Also big Navy Deployments I don’t want this to be just a ground deployments in all terms.
Amen, Maser Chief… it’s all part of being a leader.
The advice here is excellent.
I would only add that a horrible experience, plus the enormous efforts to integrate such a thing, can lead to emotional storms and actual changes in brain function that will show up on a brain scan. Similarly, relatively minor blows to the head (such as from an explosion or in the NFL) can result in traumatic brain injuries that are real enough, but tend to manifest later as behavioral changes. These are real injuries and treatable from the standpoint of brain health.
A good psychiatrist will have a thousand tools to help the healing process, and should be a great source of referrals, too. These include brain scans to rule out or identify existing, physical brain disfunction, nutrition, supplementation, exercise, EMDR, neurofeedback … . The list is long, and gets a little woo-woo in spots.
Valerie, You’re correct. I have used EMDR with good personal results for treatmant of PTSD which was a result of a sexual assualt at age 7, along with years of domestic abuse. It took a couple of counselors to use EMDR, along with single and group therapy to work things out for me, without drugs. Exercise is another key. I wish we veterans could all be so lucky as to find the treatments that work individually.
I think you guys have it exactly right.
Israel and the IDF come late to formally recognizing PTSD and other consequences of combat. But as far as I know, the suicide rate was always pretty low. Most of the country are veterans, and so a stressed and struggling veteran isn’t so isolated as in the US. And because we had an ongoing routine of meeting up in mandatory reserve duty, we often spoke with some of the very same guys who were there with us in combat.
In the US veterans can be horribly isolated. They are a minuscule minority of the overall population; many of whom can’t even fathom why they served at all, let alone understand their experience during and after combat. Other things may help; but veterans really do need to meet up and stay in contact. It’s the only way to beat the isolation; and that feeling of ‘alone’ or even ‘abandoned and without recourse’ has got to be diminished (even if it can’t always be completely beaten). And of course, vets need to know that they really do need each other and need to talk to each other.
@ MEDIC 09:
Wow, man, YOU were in the IDF?
Really COOL!
AND, you were a medic?
Double COOLNESS!
I went to Israel when I was a soldier in Viet Nam.
In return for volunteering to extend my normal tour of duty, the United States Army rewarded me with a thirty day special leave, and I told them I wanted to visit Israel.
When I was there, I took guided tours on buses, and I was the only Christian there, for everyone else was Jewish.
Boy, did I ever have fun!
Israel really is a combination of the Bible and Hollywood!
Do you still live there?
I stayed at the Park Hotel in Tel Aviv, and spent three days in Jerusalem.
I also went to Yad Vashem, Bethlehem, Avdat, Eilat, Masada, Beersheba, Hebron, Safed, Nord Arad, the Golan Heights, Rehobath, Netanya, Caesarea, Caperneum, and Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar.
I was able to learn to sing one Jewish campfire song, “HAVENU SHALOM ALEICHEM”, because it has the same words over and over throughout the whole song.
As for the other songs, I would just struggle to imitate the sounds I thought I heard the other folks making.
I visited King David’s tomb and got a certificate that says I’m “sealed unto Israel”.
I bought an antique Persian sword, and had my picture taken sitting on a camel.
I wish I could go back there.
Boy, was that fun!
Oh, by the way, although I was not a medic in the Army, after I left the Army, I became an Emergency Medical Technician (i.e., a “Medic”) in Utah, Idaho, and Montana, and Wyoming.
In Utah, I was also a firefighter and police officer.
Geographically, the state of Utah has an uncanny resemblance to Israel, and just like Israel, Utah was founded as a religious haven.
Actually, the entire United States of America was originally founded as a religious haven, but alas, our current government doesn’t like having that fact mentioned.
Shalom Aleichem!
Now, I’m just a retired, physically disabled old man, living alone with just my memories.
Alone? What are we, John, chopped liver?
We are here John, you are not alone brother.
Hey John, I’m truly glad you enjoyed Israel. It is a remarkable little country. I was an infantry soldier, and a medic on a forward medical evacuation team and later senior company medic on an infantry company that served as the recon and infantry solutions for an armored brigade. Our house is in the center of the Golan, so you may have been near there if you visited the archeological remains at Katzrin, or Gamla (the Masada of the North).
We’ve been in the States for quite a while. I’m a flight nurse/medic for an aeromedical company based in the Southwest. We fly fixed-wing operations all over North America and Central America. I’ve also worked as a rural paramedic and SAR team medic. Many of my colleagues here in the US have been veterans, which has been a good match overall. It’s also one of the reasons why I maintain an interest in American military issues; along with appreciation for the fact that the US military honorably serves and defends all of free Western society, really.
We plan on returning to Israel in the next few years; but will visit family in US when we can.
Medic09, by the by, was my rating. It is the highest or most senior rating a medical sergeant can get without going to be some sort of officer. Didn’t want that, because it would have taken me out of the field.
I know the states you worked in. We frequently fly patients to University Medical Center in SLC; and the others are places I’ve been for pleasure and to pick up patients for transport to other places. In fact, the wife is right now on her way back from a little trip to Moab (which is from a Biblical name for an area in present day southern Jordan, across from Israel).
Aleichem Shalom!
@ MEDIC 09:
G’mar hatimah tovah.
Todah!
Shalom, Medic09! I live in Beit Shemesh, and served at Tzrifin last year. If you’re ever in the Jerusalem area, it’d be nice to meet you.
Oleh, we try to spend Pesah with my wife’s best friend in Ramat Beit Shemesh. When I was a young student, I used to deliver bread from Angel Bakery to Beit Shemesh on Friday mornings. Long before Beit Shemesh got big. Those developed (dubious term) hills around old Beit Shemesh is where we used to do land navigation exercises, hiking up from the area of Shaalvim/Latrun. Those hills were beautiful; but a terror if you lead your team up the wrong one and had to reroute to the objective. The guys didn’t like when I did that.
The US deals with many of its problems by funding. That’s right. Got a problem? Government involved? Toss some money at it, create a new office, revamp an old one. That means salaries, benies, desks, chairs, space, computers, cell phones, training in Las Vegas or some such place. It means ads–telling the world that you’re on the issue, maybe issue a proclamation called Military Suicide Prevention Week. All of it is bullshit. Like alcoholics and the private, 12-step program that works for many, many people, none of that other horse shit is needed. The answer is within the Veterans, from one to another. Money and bureaucrats and research grants be damned.
Absolutely, and it applies to ALL vets from ALL wars, including Korea.
A few years ago, I attended the funeral of a sailor, a career senior NCO with lots of decorations, whom I learned later MAY have committed suicide because he MAY have been caught with child pornography or engaged in sex with a child.
Frankly, I don’t know, because I could find no verification of the Internet rumors and allegations.
There was a service held in the National Cemetery, after which the body was transported elsewhere to be buried.
Someone told me that veterans who commit suicide are not allowed to be buried in a National Cemetery, although they are allowed to have services there.
Is that true?
No, John, it is not true. There are exclusions but that isn’t one of them.
I read an article about a Dad of a despondent soldier who was contemplating suicide while deployed. His despondency appeared to be traced to a Dear John letter. In any event, his Dad told him, essentially, to man up and get over it. That was the last message the son heard. He killed himself. The Dad’s pain will never go away. He knows know that if his son had been physically hurt, he would not have told him to just ‘get over it.’ The Dad now knows that psychological injury–mental pain–can be devastating.
Could a factor contributing to some suicides possibly be the witnessing of the destruction of our Country, and/or the destruction of an organized religious faith, coupled with an inability to do anything about it?
I’m guessing those problems would have more effect on older veterans than it would on younger ones.
Still, really drastic changes are happening so fast, that maybe it even affects the young veterans adversely, maybe even without them even realizing it.
There is no single factor, as Valerie has already pointed out, that contributes to it. It is not just an emotional issue, either.
I don’t know if the drop-in centers are still available, but if not, they should never have been closed. They served a valid purpose which has not yet ended.
A lot of Veterans turn to alcohol and drugs to help get the demons out or at least to quiet them down. Alcohol has the opposite effect of what they are needing. Alcohol is a depressant and multiplies feelings of despair, depression and worthlessness exponentially. It is important that that part of the Veteran’s issues are treated as well as the other issues they are having. Denial is a huge part of both issues and leads to more suicide attempts, criminal behaviors and familial problems. As is typical of most non alcoholic people they have no common thread of which to base their emotions on so the try to throw drugs, money and research studies at the problem hoping that they will find the cure for the disease that defies most treatment methods. Not being a combat Veteran might lead one to believe that those of us that served during the Cold War don’t have the issues that combat Veterans have. I can say that once you have been in the military, nothing in the civilian world makes any sense anymore. It is very important for us to stay involved with Veterans, young and old to help them in their time of need, whether they like it or not. They are too much of a valuable asset to society to allow them to be run over by a government bureaucracy no matter the intentions of the program. This will only be helped by the individual efforts of our group of people that know and understand the feelings that those Veterans have and the trauma they have lived through. Prayer helps a lot, trust me on that, it helps a lot. The truth is that alcoholics and traumatized Veterans with depressive issues have a great big hole in their souls. They will pour sex, drugs, rock and roll and all kinds of illicit behavior in that hole hoping to fill it up. It is a spiritual journey that they need, a spiritual awakening for everything to make sense. As a recipient of a spiritual awakening after being given six months to… Read more »
If anyone needs an ear I’m in central CT and always looking for a reason to go for a beer or fish or shooting or talking about sports or….
If you find yourself on a stretch of bad road, dang, ask a Brother or Sister for directions!
The world is worth fighting for and so are you, and I swear to you that ain’t a platitude.
If you need some help and the VA is sucking check out Give An Hour, or Contact Team Rubicon to direct you to one of their Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training qualified members.
Thank you for your service. What do you feel is most important for a civilian nurse to be aware of when caring for a veteran who may be at risk for suicide?