Army Chaplain, the human dimension of the soldier, and suicide

[MikeF]

Hi Tammie, thank you for your contribution.

120mm/Schmedlap- I believe that there maybe a common middle ground within your opposing views. I'll see if I can articulate.

I would have agreed with that, prior to leaving the Army. But once I left I noticed some important differences between civilians and Soldiers in terms of suicide. For example, I never heard a Soldier say anything that includes the phrase "kill myself" or something similar. I hear it almost everyday now. Law students are notorious for self-pity; for thinking that their easy lives are tough because they have to read stuff and go to class.

Schmedlap precisely describes the distinction between civilian and military thought; however, psychologists would suggest that both mentalities are potentially unnerving and unbalancing. They use the example of the victim versus the survivor. The victim is helpless to his/her circumstance. The survivor is determined to make it right. Neither one is healthy.

I will concentrate on the soldier or survivor mentality.

Back in high school football, we learned early on the difference between being hurt and injured. If you were hurt, you could still play. If you were injured, then you could not play. The Army breeds a similar mentality- suck it up. Every solution is a measure of controlling your world. Pain is good. Back at Bragg, the remedy for overcoming soreness after a 10 mile run was to run a fast five mile.

The survivor mentality can lead to unrealistic expectations in a traumatic environment- particularly war, buddies dying, etc.. One is indoctrinated to control one's environment. How does one cope when obstacles/realities are outside of one's control? I believe this is the crux of many combat stress related problems we're seeing today. In treatment for TBI, I observed many a Vietnam veteran who spent forty years sucking it up. Instead of commiting suicide, they thrust themselves into work to compensate for their perceived difficiencies.

I've given some thought as to why the suicide rate is so high in the recruiting field. I think the answer lies in this scenario. Dude redeploys after 2-3 tours. He has a struggling marraige, he is grieving the loss of his fallen, and he is trying to understand/validate the nature of the world that he lives in. Plus, he maybe trying to figure out where his twenties or thirties went and what the hell happened to his country while he was gone.

He receives orders for recruiting duty- "a break" from the line. The family packs up, and they move to Houston, Phoenix, or whereever. Expectations are high for quality family time and reconciliation.

Instead, he begins working 13-14 hour days with unrealistic goals of enlistment quotas. He feels like a failure when he cannot coerce/convince young people to volunteer to serve. He didn't really say goodbye to his unit, and now he is left without his buddies. His wife is frustrated because he is never around.

He begins to isolate, compartmentalizing his feelings like he did to survive combat, begins drinking/drugging, and finally falls apart.

Eventually, he is found dead.

I may be off target, but I don't think so. That's why I would agree with 120mm that the suicide rate maybe a symptom of a larger mental health phenomena.

To cope, the Big Army will have to have radical acceptance of the real issue- seeing it for what it is not what we wish it to be. Moreover, it will take a comprehensive, holistic solution from chaplains, commanders, and the mental health specialist.

It can be done. I suppose that it must be done.

That's my 2 cents.

v/r

Mike

[Schmedlap]

Schmedlap precisely describes the distinction between civilian and military thought; however, psychologists would suggest that both mentalities are potentially unnerving and unbalancing. They use the example of the victim versus the survivor. The victim is helpless to his/her circumstance. The survivor is determined to make it right. Neither one is healthy.

Not to detract from Mike's post - very good input - but I realize that the point I intended to make is different from the one that I conveyed.

In the civilian world, saying that something is so bad that one is going to "kill myself" is just common hyperbole. In the Army, we were conditioned to not take such statements lightly. We didn't say them. One of the reasons for this was so that if someone truly was pondering suicide and they were to say something along the lines of "I'm going to kill myself" then it would not be taken as mere common hyperbole because we all knew that it was a warning sign and needed to be reported. It would be taken seriously. Generally, only someone truly pondering suicide would utter such a statement and it became both easier to spot and more likely to be reported. I never heard anyone say such a thing in the Army - and, coincidentally, no unit that I was in had any suicides - and I attribute the fact that I never heard such a phrase uttered directly to the "suicide awareness" programs. My point is that suicide awareness is not just some time-wasting, mandatory briefing that we sit through like EO, racial diversity, or sexual harassment (Does a multi-ethnic, all-male infantry unit really need these? I don't think so.) It serves a specific function and accomplishes that function, in my opinion, with a relatively small time commitment.