Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, according to CNN, has “in effect ordered his soldiers Wednesday not to commit suicide” in the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell. Why?
After nearly one soldier per week committed suicide at the post between January and mid-March, the Army instituted a suicide prevention program that “seemed to be having good effects” until last week, when two more suicides occurred, he said.
Yes, these are not positive numbers and the Army needs to do more to combat the stigma of seeking help for a psychological concern such as depression. They can begin by promising soldiers that such treatment seeking will have no negative effect on their ability to move up in the Army and get promoted in the future. You wouldn’t hold someone from getting a promotion if they suffered a bullet wound while in combat, so why would you discriminate based upon a mental disorder?
Dr. Mark Kaplan, a professor of community health at Portland State University in Oregon, is skeptical of the latest attempt by the Army to solve this problem, as he told CNN:
“It sounds like an order,” he told CNN in a telephone interview. “I’m not sure that a command like this is going to alter the course of somebody who is on a trajectory of self-harm.”
He suggested the Army might want to adopt the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs model.
“They’re dealing with a comparable problem with a similar population,” Kaplan said. “They have infused more sensitivity to their approach to suicide prevention as opposed to this. This is like any other order.”
I’d have to agree. The V.A. model is better (although perhaps still not ideal), and definitely one to try and replicate throughout the U.S. armed services. Suicide prevention is a process that must, despite the military environment, include sensitivity and awareness that it is a sign of serious, undiagnosed depression. Once the military starts treating mental disorders such as depression like other health concerns that they neither discriminate against nor stigmatize, I think they’ll find far more success than their current, broken and haphazard methods.
Read the full story: ‘Tell somebody,’ if you’re thinking of suicide, says general
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7 Comments to
“Soldiers Ordered Not to Kill Themselves”
The same article records that the general also remarked, “You wouldn’t hesitate to seek medical attention for a physical injury or wound; don’t hesitate to seek medical attention for a psychological injury.” There’s an eerie parallelism between that and your comment about career repercussions.
I agree absolutely that the profound stigma on mental illness in the military is grossly harmful and needs to be addressed. But I’m not sure I agree that “ordering” soldiers not to commit suicide will be ineffective. I think feeling like you have social “permission” to commit suicide makes the act more likely, and feeling like it would be frowned upon by your community makes it less likely. After all, suicide is not a rational act. (Rationally, I suppose the attitudes of your peers wouldn’t matter, since you would be dead anyway.)
What matters is that people aren’t feeling suicidal - working on boosting wellbeing would have far more positive effects than just stopping suicides.
For example, if all those feeling suicidal continued to feel so, but didn’t actully kill themselves, you’d still have hundreds (?thousands?) feeling awful. A modern society cannot allow despair without trying to help.
Agreed, and that’s the fallacy of “ordering” people not to take their own lives; as Bill Lichtenstein points out in the full article, there are simple means to screen for the indicators of suicide. That’s what the military should be doing, instead of relying on the hope that soldiers will “follow orders” not to kill themselves. (”Just say no…”)
First reaction was, right, military intelligence at work.. But gingko100’s comment added more context. At time in my life when I thought about suicide, there was a brake on doing something so final because i had been taught that this was an immoral act. This didn’t improve my mood, but it did made me stop and consider consequences. So maybe it is not so crazy to “order” soldiers not to hurt themselves - for those who really identify as soldiers, seeing suicide as dishonorable may stop them from doing it. And if they remain alive, they can - and must - be helped
We have an extreme mental health crisis in this country. The crisis is that so many people, industries, and “pro-gender” supporters (i.e., the “men or tough people don’t seek help” voices) fail to recognize how significant mental health truly is. They ignore the warning signs, or fall prey to overlooking signs of a mental illness because they lack the knowledge to identify it and the courage to investigate and treat it.
Unfortunately military men, after all they do (day and night, year after year) to support their country, lack the appropriate self-help tools and treatment options they deserve. How is it that these men and women fight for the richest country in the world, yet never receive the attention they need?
Well…I have one theory: one reason is due to our lack of knowledge of mental illness. The more we ignore it, the worse it gets. The less care and concern we show those who live in turmoil, the worse our life expectancy becomes. This was a wake-up call, and I hope our military will seriously consider changing their opinions/stigmas and start putting things in place to provide a better standard of living for our military.
What a “double-jeopardy,” families lose their loved one’s because their called off to war, and they lose them because they aren’t being watched or taken care of properly.
In December my younger brother died from a self inflicted gun shot wound. He had served in the Army National Guard spending some time deployed in Afghanistan. I think there are a lot of stigma changes and paradigm shifts that need to be happen with mental illness ESPECIALLY in the military. My brother was not on medication and was not seeking medical help and part of that was the due to the stigma associated. While active in the Military he took medication for a short time but would only allow himself that as he would not be able to continue in the military if he continued taking medication.
I have also been on medication for my mental health “issue’s”, when I tried to join the military they would not take me because I was on an anti-depressant. I thought it silly and stupid that they would take a “crazy” person that neither recognizes nor addresses their “insanity” but they won’t take some one who is choosing to address their “issues.”
Another point is that my brother very likely had a borderline personality disorder and it makes perfect sense for people with these types of disorders to join the military. Sort of a noble death wish if you will. That in and of it’s self is not necessarily a bad thing and it’s rather silly of the military to avoid these people but rather it seems it would make sense to utilize this personality type and in giving them the medical help they need with out the discrimination it would really make for a phenomenal military.
I know my brother and I know what I am talking about. They (or we) would be an incredible asset to any branch of military but medical attention, education and acceptance in the arena of mental health is crucial and in a military setting would probably be fairly simple. Feel free to visit my blog amicrazy2.blogspot.com
In a recent research study by mental health professionals themselves reveals the following: 1. That even psychiatrists in a blind study, could not agree, to a reasonable scientific degree about the what diagnoses, they were placing upon people. 2. This study concluded that it was found that a reliability coefficient of, no more that at the 51%ile, was discovered between psychiatrists in a blind study. 3. The conclusion is that psychiatrists who are experts, are as a group in just as much in the dark, and seemingly confused about the the “Diagnostic Statistics Manual of Mental Illnesses.” 4. Now if psychiatrists cannot even agree upon the psych labels they put on people, perhaps we the public needs to look at what’s going on, in the field.
It is concluded that mental health cannot satisfactorily be defined by even experts, and that psychiatry continues to be an unaccountable, and unreliable entity. Perhaps too much of a risk for anyone to place any trust upon.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 29 May 2009
