Major General John Rossi’s suicide
Back in October, we talked about Major General John Rossi’s suicide. Folks speculated about the reasons that he took such an extreme step. KSWO says it was merely sleep deprivation and fear of the Peter Principle that sent him off the edge;
Former Fort Sill Commander Major General John Rossi struggled with feelings of inadequacies in his abilities to perform his new job and sleep deprivation before he committed suicide in July of 2016, according to a report released by Army Investigators.
MG Rossi was just days away from becoming a three-star general and assuming command of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama when his wife found him dead in their home.
According to a report in the Army Times, Rossi had been struggling with sleep deprivation and feelings he was not smart enough for his role within the Army for years prior to his decision to end his life on July 31. His death has triggered a review of mental health issues across the entire Army.
I can’t help but think that if he’d reached out, or if someone had been paying closer attention to the general, this could have been avoided.
Category: Military issues
For suicide – who knows?
I have known people who have had it all. Money, social standing, success, great looks, etc.
What makes a reason for one is not for others…
Same here, I’ve seen powerful, rich people, and poor people who had nothing, and those in between, do it. People who left all kinds of signs and people who just, apparently, walked out the door, down the steps or into the garage and did it, no signs, nothing said.
I know, I had a friend and coworker who always seemed upbeat, motivated and hardworking that went home after a week’s work and had a heavy date with a .357 Magnum, tough to deal with.
A friend of ours ran the R&G – both my wife and I ran into him at separate times one day, and asked him how things were. He seemed a bit depressed so both tried to cheer him up a bit, y’know? Next morning he opened the R&G early, and ate a .357…it haunts us to this day over 30 years later. No calls for help, didn’t seem unduly depressed, just a little down.
Suicide my ass…someone offed him for whatever reason…he knew too much or was going to blow the whistle on something! You really think a Major General is going to feel inadequate? You really think a loss of sleep…for a General? horseshyt!
Human being, Mark One. Same Brain Housing Group as anyone else. Different value sets and goals, but the same processing hardware.
Thus, fully capable of any of the usual major malfunctions, from programming errors to processor glitches.
.
Consider: a person so convinced of their own inadequacies and impending failure, that they seek higher and higher stations so that when they are “finally” found out, they at least have the excuse of “well, that level is actually -hard-, so of course, fail.”
It would explain some seemingly weird match-ups of lack of confidence but seemingly soaring achievement.
A less … terminal example: the guy in the unit that consistently self-rates at or below average, but peers and superiors consistently rate as above-average or top-tier.
A -little- of that “I could have done that a whole lot better” drives one to stellar achievement. A whole bunch of it makes one prone to seriously fatal mental collapse, sometimes well before any actual setback or failure.
The track star runner who always has in mind how to shave yet another 1/10th is going to the Olympics someday. The one who wins Gold at state championship and says “That was just shit!” is going to die of it.
Wow. “desert,” I don’t know you except for the verbal vomit you spew on here, but using that as a guide, you are a real asshole. I’ve been saying from the start that you are someone trying to make this site look bad by associating it with the things you say. You’ve never once tried to prove me wrong. In fact, each time you say something on here like this, it proves my point even more.
“His death has triggered a review of mental health issues across the entire Army.” typical army response, update your gat , more briefings.faqqq this is why I have to do mrt and behavioral health quarterly?
Sad. He evidently had the integrity to want to do a good job and not just rubber-stamp his way through. It never should’ve led to this, though. It should have been a motivation, not a burden.
Unfortunate loss of a life. Sounds like a person that the Military as a whole and the Army will miss for years to come.
Rest in Peace, Major General Rossi….
Great sadness
Help is out there, folks, but you have to ask for it.
I have.
Bingo.
If you’re seriously thinking of offing yourself, for whatever reason, ask for help. DON’T try to face those demons by yourself.
You might be successful in turning them away. But if you’re not, your family pays – for the rest of their lives.
Concur.
Given the right set of circumstances, everyone has a breaking point. Therefore, there is no shame in seeking help.
Suicide is a permanent solution to what all too frequently ends up being a temporary problem that could have been successfully dealt with with assistance.
I was acquainted with MajGen Rossi some years ago. He was always a gentleman and very professional in my encounters with him. It is sad and tragic that this has happened, and I hope that his family can find some form of solace as they deal with the aftermath.
There is nothing permanent about suicide! A nurse tried to commit suicide and indeed the doctors declared her dead, while she was dead she was shown what would have been her after life, she would have been destined to live her life over and over and over….suicide is NOT an end to a problem, it is the BEGINNING OF PROBLEMS! Turn to Jesus, he is the solution!
It’s lonely at the top. Sad, but true. When you’re the commander, who do you go to for help? Senior commanders are often less than than sympathetic, or at least they may be perceived so.
It sounds as though, for whatever reason, MG Rossi was dealing with depression and maybe cumulative stress.
I had to ask for it too. Looking back I wish I would have asked much earlier.
That’s no shit right there. I held out, trying to deal with it myself, like a good Soldier. When I finally did seek help I was deep into depressive psychosis. It was fucking awful.
The problem for officers and reaching out is that their avenues are restricted to the chaplaincy.
He could have been in a no-win situation. I can’t lead, I can’t get that star, if I see a shrink, I can’t get that star because it’s going in my OER.
A civilian shrink can’t help him because they have no idea what the military culture is about.
What a terrible delimma. While I understand the military’s need for unscrupulous leaders, officers their families need a professional path to help that doesn’t cost them their carreer, or their lives.
It’s sad when you’re NOT allowed to lead by example…
Precisely!
This it too sad for words.
Ditto all above.
I try to stay engaged with my new fam of vets in my home town, if not for the entertainment, to protect them and myself from falling out, permanently.
We care better for ourselves then anyone else. Most of us have looked too deep into the abyss but for the grace of some profound magic we are still here.
I swore a creed that stated a basic responsibility of the welfare of my soldiers, a duty I must still fulfill.
If you’re in CT and you need a hand, an ear and/or a beer, please without hesitation, reach out to me and I’ll get you in touch with every and any resource I have or know about (and trust, I’ve had to do some seriously hard lessons learned).
Stay breezy.
Rest in peace Sir. God be with your family.
With all due respect, he had another option- retirement and a large enough pension where he would not have to work again. There had to be more to what was bothering him.
On the other hand, retirement can also be a curse. Many feel useless and unfulfilled despite the relative comfort of a hefty retirement check. It is not always greener on the other side.
Keep positive my friends.
Who knows what demons reside in the minds of good men. A local suicide two years ago still has everyone here baffled.
With all due respect you have no idea what so ever about suicide or what drives it. Seriously, get educated because we all have friends and family members who may be susceptible and with our histories we need to be aware.
I just lost a friend to suicide a couple months ago, he always wanted to get together with the guys and do an epic road trip…we all had excuses and it never happened. He was also the star of our group and seemingly had it all. We are left wondering why and what if and there isn’t one single thing we can find that triggered it.
Dude, you have no fucking idea. Depression is an unreasoning mental illness. Until and unless you suffer from it yourself, you will never know what an absolute hell on earth it can be. I hope you never, ever have to find out.
the pressures and stresses of senior positions are enormous. Zero defects, no safety violations, no nothing wrong ever is the standard.
Every move you make is wrong. Every decision armchair quarterbacked by your seniors and no, being right is not enough.
Most of the men and women who serve in these positions fare well, but for some it is too much.
The challenges outweigh the inner reserves of strength…and no one wants to hear it, deal with it, or even admit it.
So we get this outcome.
If you add the number of die within a year of retirement of heart attacks, strokes, cancers and silly accidents, the numbers may be higher than we think.
General Rossi was a great leader who was literally ground down by a system designed to kill.
Add loss of a spouse increases the likelihood of the bereaved to die as well.
Aw shit, I’m screwed.
Feeling that he was not smart enough,!, with the current climate in the Army, you cannot make mistakes. If you do it could cost you your career at the least. I figure the higher you go, the more visable any mistake is. It’s a shame, both the climate of the Army and the loss of GEN Rossi.
This is local news for me. They also reported that he kept thinking about Soldiers that he had lost during other assignments.
My Gid bless him and his family.
I have been right at the edge of where MG Rossi went. My whole life was changing, divorce, children grown and out if the house, anxiety issues related to my last deployment…and my then wife being a faithless whore… depression, inability to sleep, feelings of inadequacy and another deployment coming up with a shit ton of brand new technology heaped upon me, about which I knew nothing, and for the first time in nearly 30 years, I didn’t feel like I could do my job effectively. So I started feeling like I had to kill myself. All the time. I finally got help, but doing so hot me put on meds that made me non-deployable. And that is a career ender, at least from my point of view. So I retired.
CW, at least you’re here to tell the story and fight another day. I thank God for that much, although I’m sorry to hear you went through so much.
It was a learning experience. I divorced that worthless POS opportunist I was married to, and finally found the woman who could actually handle life as an Army wife. Third time is the charm I guess. I popped smoke the month we got married, unit deployed without me, and now my crusty old ass has two little ones, including a beautiful little daughter who is snuggled up on my lap as I type this. God had other plans, clearly.
Glad you chose life.
Being a Soldier is what you do, not who you are
The mistake a LOT of us make is that we don’t recognize that truth. I will say, though, that I miss who I saw myself as being before all of this happened to me. I was proud of that guy.
I commend you for your willingness to discuss your own journey here, where others might take benefit. Thank you.
I was pretty bitter about this shit for quite awhile. The Army pays a LOT of lip service Soldier care, but the hard, sad truth is that if you have a mental/emotional health insurance, and admit to it, then you are perceived as being weak, and no longer of any value, especially if you are in a leadership position of any kind. The zero defects mentality is a pox upon the military service, but worse is the tendency to view Soldiers in emotional distress as being broken and useless, and the tendency of Soldiers to remain silent about the internal hell they are experiencing, until it is too late. RIP MG Rossi.
I fucking HATE auto-correct, BTW. “ISSUES”.
The Army is not exactly gentle with anything “weak” or “defective”, but it does scale to perceived “not his fault” and percieved “repairable”.
Brain Housing Group issues tend to be percieved as a lack of will or “tough” and/or percieved ass non-repairable.
In fairness, the guy who fell apart once, “for no apparent (to us) reason” might do so again, at a really sucky time. The guy with the bum knee or ankle might also become load, not aid, again at bad time.
The whole wrectched mess is complicated by the harsh reality that we have almost no clue what is actually going on in the head. We have a few hypothesis, some data (often really screwy and contradictory) and a whole bunch of what will someday turn out to be hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo.
When your own mind seems to turn against you, how does one stand, let alone endure?
Better not to die stupidly, so I say “speak up!”. Easier said than done, granted. But its gotta be easier than drowning in the abyss, all alone.
The rest of us need to be listening, because the “ask” is not going to be real loud, or real clear.
The ask is too often not at all.My problem started with anxiety and difficulty sleeping while I was still deployed, and got worse the closer my end if tour got. When I got back to CRC Ft. Benning, I was told that since I still more than six months left on my 565 day orders that I might be sent to A-Stan, I was half hoping they would send me, so I wouldn’t have to go home…Not a happy marriage, BTW…And never once made mention that I was having problems. I have to wonder now, all these years later, if a little Xanax at that moment in time could have alleviated the anxiety issue enough to give me some breathing space. Maybe it wouldn’t have slid off into clinical depression. It’s all good now, but I just have to wonder.
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