It took me a long time to write this paper, and although I only got a B on it, I feel that it is some of the best work I've written when it comes to research papers. I don't expect anyone to actually sit and read a nine page paper on Suicides within the Military, but hey, I thought I'd post it anyway, for my own satisfaction, of course. That, and I felt like I haven't written much here lately, just posted videos, so I needed a lot of text to make up for it.
They’re strong--army strong. Many of them give their lives so we can sleep in peace at night. Soldiers will come home looking for support after multiple deployments and some won’t find it. What is the solution these soldiers come up with? It’s blowing a bullet through their brains or a good hanging or poisoning. Despite the U.S. Military’s efforts to lower the soldier suicide rate, soldier suicides have risen to all-time highs. The suicide prevention programs aren’t working because of the soldier mentality that needing help is a weakness. Furthermore, few psychologists are willing to help the army with their suicide prevention programs. In order to lower the suicide rate among soldiers, the army must instill within its soldiers that seeking help is not a sign of weakness and teach its chaplains counseling techniques to help soldiers deal with problems in their lives.
Instilling the Mentality
When a recruit enlists in the army, he or she is put through a mental health screening, but this doesn’t work perfectly as a filter; recruits can lie during their screening (Scoville). Recruits aren’t under oath to tell the truth during the mental health screening, so there is no moral necessity for them to tell the truth if it would stop them from getting the job. With these facts in mind, the U.S. Military knows that they are sending some mentally unstable recruits to be trained; the problem is knowing which recruits are mentally unsound. Mentally unstable, the unqualified recruits head off to basic training.
What recruits go through physically at basic training has some serious mental repercussions. According to Niklas Ross, a Private E2 in the U.S. Army, the battering starts as soon as you get off the bus. “The drill sergeants get you off the bus and smoke you (meaning they put you through strenuous physical activity such as push ups, sit ups, bear crawls, etc.) and swear at you. Then they start the shark attack. They converge on the weakest member of the group and bring him down” (Ross).
The drill sergeants bring the recruits down so they can build them up strong, and recruits that show inadequacy, physical or mental, are not tolerated. Looking back on the experience, Private Ross believes “it is never said, but the mentality that physical and mental problems are weaknesses make a bad soldier is the underlying tone of the entire experience” (Ross). Basic weeds out the people who aren’t soldier material, but it paves the way for a new problem.
The soldiers who make it come out with a new mentality: any mental or physical problems are the makings of a bad soldier. As the drill sergeants yelled and disciplined them for ten weeks, this new philosophy was engrained in their brains. When it comes to preventing soldier suicide, the army takes a step backward at the very beginning of soldier training. Sure, soldiers have to be desensitized and strong to do what they have to, but they should know that getting help when you have problems is not impotence, but a sign of strength and wisdom.
Issues Building on the Mentality
This soldier mentality causes some rather large problems in soldiers’ personal lives. Some soldiers who are married face relationship strains from multiple deployments. A soldier’s marital relationship may become so strained that it leads to the couple separating. A tragedy such as divorce can lead to anxiety and depression in a citizen, and a deployed soldier finding out his or her spouse has up and left is much more vulnerable to these mental problems. In fact, out of the soldiers that committed suicide in 2007, 57 percent were married (Youssef). The breaking up of a relationship is certainly a large factor in why soldiers are committing suicide. They can’t see past the present and there is no quick fix solution, so there seems them the only choice is to take their lives. This is a very spontaneous and impulsive action that comes from the mentality that the ineptitude a person feels isn’t going to go away.
Poor support systems are also a part of why soldiers commit suicide. A soldier comes home looking for support after a long and trying deployment, and there is little to no support from friends and family members. When Steve Yeschin, a former marine, came back from his deployment he had a good, strong family to support him, but he says that he doesn’t think most marines who come home have “nearly anything comparable to the support system that I had” (Military). Soldiers coming home to no support system face the same problem aforementioned: they can’t see past the short term future. One way to combat this problem is to get communities to bond together and help the soldiers in their neighborhoods transition from life as a deployed soldier to life in the States.
Economic problems have been an issue of increasing prevalence. Many soldiers have jobs other than the military. When soldiers go to war and come home a year and a half later they may find that jobs they once had are no longer available. For some soldiers the thought that they will have a job when they come back home is their stability. When this is gone their stability is also lost (Military). Soldiers seeking jobs find that employers won’t hire them because they are in the military. Hiring a soldier that may face another deployment isn’t worth their while. One way to help solve this has been to increase the rest period between deployments. In his radio show, All Things Considered, Robert Siegel said that “a Pentagon mental health survey team said combat soldiers need even more time off. It is said that soldiers who face heavy combat should get 30 days off for every 90 day sin combat” (Military Suicide). With the increase in break periods between deployments, employers should feel obligated to hire skilled workers even if they are soldiers.
The Plan
Because all of these problems exist, the U.S. Military has composed a plan to prevent soldier suicide. There are psychologists overseas with soldiers as well as a battle buddy system to get soldiers bonding and talking to each other. Military leaders are trying to lower the level of stigma around the suicide prevention program and strengthen their program with more mental health care providers. There are also many transitioning programs that soldiers go through to readjust to living a normal life.
A psychologist is sent overseas with the soldiers, yet still some soldiers mental states worsen as they see multiple deployments. It is so taboo to go to the psychologist for help that most soldiers don’t. There are two main reasons for this: soldiers are afraid to lose their jobs because of mental health issues and they believe it reflects a weak soldier (Youssef).
There are many bad consequences that come from being the weak one, so it is understandable that soldiers wouldn’t want to appear weak. “Your battle buddies make fun of you and jerk you around if you get help. That’s just how most soldiers are” (Ross). The military’s response to this is to take the uncaring, nonchalant attitude out of soldiers and teach them to care for and help each other mentally (DOD). This is a very important step for soldiers to take because it opens a backdoor route for struggling soldiers to receive help. It gives the soldiers time to get to know each other and see that a character flaw doesn’t make a bad person or soldier. In fact, if soldiers would more fully engage in getting to know one another there would be a greater chance to prevent soldier suicide.
However, soldier heart-to-hearts are obviously not going to lower the soldier suicide rate on their own. “At least 115 active duty soldiers, National Guardsmen and reservists committed suicide in 2007 compared to 102 the previous year, the report found…. The Army counted 935 reported suicide attempts” (Youssef). While this may seem low compared to the national average, the numbers have crept up and then spiked to a 30-year high for the U.S. Military. For the first tim in history, the U.S. Military suicide rate is higher than its nation’s average.
U.S. Military officials say they need to lower the level of stigma around getting help for mental problems, but that is easier said than done. In an article on how to prevent soldier suicide, Kristin Ellis, an Army Public Affairs official, suggests that “leadership involvement is key--leaders need to create a healthy environment in which soldiers are encouraged to seek help” (Ellis 43). The U.S. Military needs to stop the stigma at its source. This idea needs to slide on down to the basic training level. The cadre there, especially the drill sergeants, need to develop some encouraging tactics to lower the stigma around seeking help. As mentioned earlier, the drill sergeants are looked upon with fear. They are the disciplinary figures. But fear doesn’t bring respect. The drill sergeants should be father figures, strong and encouraging. This would give them the opportunity to instill a mentality of brotherly love, and through that they can let the soldiers know it is okay to seek help if they have a problem, especially if it is a mental health problem.
The U.S. Army’s mental health care sector is still busy despite the stigma around it, and the program has shown some surprising weaknesses. Because mental health care providers are so busy there is a strain on the program. There is a shortage of mental health care providers, and though army officials plead with mental health care providers to join the military, few respond (Youssef). Until the U.S. Military can entice psychologists to join in the suicide prevention effort, there will continue to be a strain on the military’s mental health care sector. Whether the army entices them using money or morals is up to the organization, but action needs to be taken. As an XM Radio host wrote in an article, we need to be putting all our available and unavailable resources into helping our soldiers (Military Suicides).
Transitioning programs have been one of the Army’s great tools to preventing soldier suicide. When soldiers get back from a deployment, the U.S. Military puts them in a program where they are taught how to go back to living a normal life in society. Still, these transitioning programs aren’t 100 percent on preventing soldier suicides. Yeschin, has said that despite the transitioning programs it “still is kind of hard to relate to a lot of the people who are in my life before I went over because there is just this gap now where, you know, certain things that were once meaningful to mea are really meaningless now, and things that are really meaningful to me are meaningless to the people who surround me” (Military). Yeschin had two battle buddies who committed suicide upon returning to the States and a few battle buddies who came back and are now lost on drugs (Military). Although transitioning programs help, it is obvious that without a good support system behind them, soldiers are more likely to commit suicide.
How Chaplains Can Help
Chaplains need to change their approach to helping soldiers. Instead of strictly focusing on large issues that deal specifically with the military, they should focus on the soldiers’ personal lives. A soldier can tell a chaplain anything he or she wants because chaplains are bound to secrecy. This resource seems to be under-utilized. Chaplains can be great counsellors and influences in a soldier’s life. However, in order to make sure that chaplains are effective in their counseling, the military needs to teach them the right techniques. To do this, the military leaders need to look to their forbearers for advice and knowledge.
Three decades ago chaplains were saving relationships and lives with their counseling skills. In a Military Chaplains Review from 1977, Chaplain Major Donald R. Davis talks about his approach to counseling soldiers. His main focus was on teaching the soldiers new ways to look at life (Davis). Soldiers often feel as if they are puppets on a string that the government controls, and getting them away from that mentality is crucial to enabling them to get better control over their lives. They need to realize that they have value no matter what their rank or status in life. The U.S. Military needs to teach their soldiers how to think rationally when it comes to the events that take place in their lives.
The inability of people to manage their personal affairs is a great tragedy in today’s society. This problem was noticed by Davis. He said, “The greatest tragedy of twentieth century America… the failure of people to manage their personal lives in productive and meaningful ways. This greatest of tragedies is revealed in the alarming rate of suicide among today’s young people” (Davis 49). With this in mind, the fantastic solution to preventing soldier suicide is teaching them how to manage their personal lives. The U.S. Military needs to teach their chaplains how to teach soldiers to manage their lives and how to act when an unfavorable event comes their way.
The U.S. Military’s former chaplains seem to have had quite the handle on teaching personal management skills. They used something called Rational-emotive Therapy also known as RET. This therapy strives to rid people of their irrational beliefs and behaviors by identifying a person’s inner beliefs and sorting the beliefs into rational and irrational. Then a psychologist, or in this case chaplain, moves on to a reeducation process to rid soldiers of these irrational perceptions by teaching them rational thinking techniques and sending them home with homework assignments to learn more about how they view the world. The patient works and practices rational thinking until emotional insight comes with new thinking. This method of counseling has saved relationships from failing and stopped men and women from committing suicide (Davis). If the U.S. Military learns from its past and integrates formerly used techniques into its suicide prevention program, they would have more success because they would be building off of something that has proven itself in the field.
How To Save A Life
To put it simply, the U.S. Military needs to learn from the past and implement old ideas into their new suicide prevention program. With chaplains working with soldiers to learn how to think rationally and soldiers helping one another along the way, the U.S. Military can lower its soldier suicide rate.
Bibliography
Davis, Chaplain (MAJ) Donald R. “Rational Counseling.” Military Chaplains Quarterly Summer (1977): 49-58.
“DOD Works to Reduce Military Suicides.” Soldiers Vol. 61 10 (2008): 40-40 1/2p.
Ellis, Kristin. “Preventing Soldier Suicide.” Soldiers Vol. 62 4 (2007): 42-3.
“Military Suicide Rate Hits 30-Year High.” News & Notes. NPR. KBYU, Culver City, California. 17 February 2009.
“Military Suicides on the Rise.” Editorial. The New York Amsterdam News. ed. 19 June-25 June 2008: 13.
“Report: 99 Military Suicides in 2006.” All Things Considered. NPR. KBYU, Culver City, California. 16 August 2007.
Ross, Nik PVT. Personal Interview. 30 March 2009.
Scoville, Stephanie L. “Deaths Attributed to Suicide Among Enlisted U.S. Armed Forces Recruits, 1980-2004.” Military Medicine 172 (2007) 10: 1024.
Youssef, Nancy A. “Army Suicides Rise Again Despite New Focus by Military.” Knight Ridder Tribune [Washington Bureau (DC)] 29 May 2008.
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