Preventive Measures in the Armed Forces to Combat Suicide

The untreated depression, frequent deployments, financial stress, substance abuse, borderline personality disorder, often brutal choices and the family separation have been linked to suicide rate among soldiers.

The problem that I am presenting is obviously the suicides in our military, but the solution I am proposing is not that of what the doctors and researchers are working towards. Instead of focusing on resiliency training that the Army STARRS has come up with, I think we should be focusing on building morale in the individual squadrons around the globe. When people go to work dreading what it about to come because they are sick of being in an environment that they have to be constantly worried about making one mistake that might end their whole career, some of them might in turn become suicidal. I’ve seen it. The solution I am proposing is that throughout all the branches, the units become more focused on the people’s well being rather than what kind of discipline they are going to give for someone making a mistake. Rather than burning people for making a mistake for the first time, they should provide them with the help they might need to get better. For lack of better words, they need to stop kicking people when they are down. All the branches are guilty of

The Air Force lost 38 airmen to suicide in 2008, a rate of 11.5 suicides per 100,000 airmen. The average over the past five years — since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom — was 11 deaths per 100,000 annually. Of the airmen lost in 2008, 95 percent were men and 89 percent were enlisted. Young enlisted men with a rank of E1 to E4 and between the ages of 21 and 25 have the highest risk of suicide. Recently released data indicates that active duty males carry, for the first time in known history, a suicide risk greater than that of comparable males in the general population (Psychotherapy Brown Bag, 2009). This is particularly noteworthy considering that the military entrance process screens out serious mental illness prior to entry onto active duty, and that the rate of suicide in military males has historically been significantly lower than comparable civilian populations. To help

Since 2001, the Unites States Military has been engaged in steady armed conflict all around the world and soldiers are taking their own lives due to the stresses of combat. (Ramchand, Acosta, Burns, Jaycox, & Pernin, 2011). The mission of the Military’s Suicide Prevention Program is to provide an endless supply of family support, information, medical assistance, and training to soldiers and their families with the goal of preventing and/or reducing the number of suicides. Leaders at the state and national level put forth great effort to reduce suicides in the military which is a great concern. Policy makers and legislators are continuously updating regulations to provide service members and their families with the best resources to help with all forms of PTSD and suicidal tendencies. A major goal is to get help to the service member before the thoughts of suicide are

Authorities not even aware of the spike in suicides in the 2/7 deployment. The Department of Veterans Affairs said that they don’t track suicide trends amount veterans of specific military units. The resulting suicide rate for the group is nearly four times the rate for young male veterans as a whole, and fourteen times that for all Americans.

There is a common belief that many combat veterans are suffering; many from invisible wounds that affect them in many ways. The challenge that the VA and other government agencies face is determining which veterans need help, there are several factors that affect this, from the individual’s desire to accept help, to the stigma that most veterans have accepted, which is “if they ask for help, they are weak.” During separation from the military it is a critical time for all soldiers, this time provides an opportunity for the military, the VA and our government to intercede and work with men and women while they are still soldiers. Veteran suicide is an epidemic, the number of veterans taking their life daily has been steadily growing, the statistic published by the VA is that twenty-two veterans end their lives every day (Suicide Data Report, 2012); steps have been taken to curb this number but the efforts have been woefully inadequate.

On the night of March 20th, 2012, a twenty-three year old veteran named William Busbee, locked himself in his car and shot himself in the head. His mother and two little sisters were standing just a few feet away (Multiple Deployments). A veteran commits suicide every eighty minutes. If that number is not shocking to hear then I don’t know what is. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is a major factor in this mass suicide of veterans. Suicide among veterans is turning into an epidemic. An epidemic that can be stopped with the help of experienced and educated psychologists. Those psychologists are working hard everyday with veterans who are suffering from PTSD in an attempt to cure and potentially rid the patient of this disorder. Maybe

The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war involved several injuries; as well as, four thousand casualties, and the number of suicides from 2012 to present outnumbers the soldiers dead from combat. The high cost of soldiers were dying in an unpopular war by the Bush administration and the cost to Americans at home and abroad in caring for these wounded warriors, as a result, by 2003 to 2010 the deaths in military action suicides, and suicides at home at a rate of thirteen point five per one hundred thousand troops (Lancet). This only includes America’s causalities, not the deaths of Afghanistan, Iraq, allies and Iraq civilians killed during the war, yet on top of that; rebuilding their shattered lives. The tragedy of war did not just affect Americans; the American soldiers were in

The military is one of the most culturally diverse employers in the world, therefore it is hard to identify a specific target population at a higher risk of suicide. However, from the research conducted by Kemp and Bossarte (2012) the data shows white male veterans between the ages of 50 and 79 were more likely to commit suicide than any other race, gender or age group. Additionally, the periods in which the veteran served also plays a huge role in veteran suicide, where the data shows Vietnam veterans are significantly at a higher risk for suicide (Kemp & Bossarte, 2012). It must be said, there is research which shows there is no statistically significant increases in suicide mortality among Vietnam veterans when compared to other war era veterans (Bossarte, Claassen, & Knox, 2010). The research conducted by David Lester (2005) shows there are several reasons for this. First, America engaged in the Vietnam War without the approval, of the United Nation (Lester, 2005), causing a nation to become divided. The war was meet with mix views and opinions however, veterans from Vietnam were not accepted or appreciated by the general public around the world, and here in the United States. These veterans were protested

The article demonstrates the culture of problem solving in America where every little problem is projected to demonstrate its importance. In many other countries, the issue of suicide in the Army would not be given much attention but in this study, the Pentagon funding the study alone is important in taking care of soldiers. The most important thing in the article however is training the chaplains to first believe in therapy and then help those that seek help in the Army since it is shocking that many of them do not believe in the importance of therapy. Soldiers should also be made to see the importance of therapy and sensitized against stigmatization of those that seek therapy because about half of soldiers claimed they would feel embarrassed if their fellow soldiers found out that they sought

The suicide rate for non deployed Afghanistan veterans is at a staggering sixty one percent whilst deployed veterans is at only forty one percent. In comparison, of number of bodies that is around eight thousand for the non deployed and only about 2,000 for the deployed. These stats are confusing because most would think that the war is what drives soldiers to the edge, but apparently that is not the case. The cause of these suicides has a range of explanations. Some simply related to the fact that the transition of wearing a uniform every day to not, is a challenging feat. In the army taking on a leadership role comes with the job whether you get deployed or not. Transitioning to commanding others then ending up in a job where you are the follower is a difficult

According to recent data, suicide is in on the top ten causes of death in the United States. As the staggering number of suicides increases to over 36,000 a year, and more than a 100 each day. (O’Neil 1) When looking at the data for military veterans, the numbers are even more alarming, as the increasing number, is caused for a national concern. In the past decade the demographics for veterans that committed suicide was predominantly was white male and in the age range of 18 years to 25 years old. Many of the reasons found for their suicide was mostly related to job satisfaction, money problems, or relationship issues. However, since the military has been engaged in war after September 11th, the demographics have changed. No longer is the demographic profile predominantly white, but now it involves several races, as well as age ranges that extend up to 44 years of age. The issues that have been found includes the stress of deployment, knowing when the time is up, the stress of leaving their families, the stress of possible dying, and other added stressors. As McCarl (2012) points out, “For these service members to survive the battlefield only to return home and commit suicide is a notion that reeks of depressing irony.” (McCarl 398) Suicides by Veterans have become a growing health concern, as many have come back from war, trying to adjust to civilian life. The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the growing rates of suicide by war veterans. Examining the causes,

With the growing number of veteran related suicides, there is a cause for concern on what may be the contributing factor or factors to yield such outcome. The current rate of suicide for veterans in the United States 18 to 22 incidences daily, which is higher than ordinary non veteran citizens (1).

Many of our country's soldiers come home from the field broken. They are like a plate, if you drop a plate and it breaks, you can glue it back together but it will never be the same. This tells how many people who are in the army feel, and because of this a lot of them commit suicide.

As this project is brought to a close, a reflection can be made on what should be done differently. The project did not struggle with a timeline or gathering information on soldier suicides at the state level. The project did not suffer from lack of participation by chaplains who heard the initial phase 1 introduction to CALLS training and enlistment for more information. However, the Project Director acknowledges that there was an underestimate to the sheer volume of information that the Bible has on the topic of suicidality. Characters throughout the Old Testament could have been discussed or added to the training. This was seen as being too time consuming and would have taken the project much further off of the