Suicides and deployments

We’ve been hearing a lot about a recent release on the rising number of suicides among soldiers, particularly among those deployed, on the news for the past couple days. Of course when they say soldiers, I think it’s just referring to the Army–from what I recall of the stats from my last Air Force suicide awareness and prevention briefing (a fun two-hour event that we are mandated to attend annually; made even more fun by the fact that the briefing, slides and all, doesn’t change from one year to the next–I assume that next year I’ll be able to recite long sections of it along with the presenter), the AF has had fairly steady (and much lower) suicide rates for the past few years.

Then again, the Air Force as a whole isn’t dealing with the kind of deployments that the Army has been. While there are certain career fields in the Air Force (Public Affairs, Intelligence, and Medical, off the top of my head) that go out for one deployment after another, we’ve also got large swaths of people who never have to head overseas unless they volunteer for it. We’re all assigned to “buckets” where we’re vulnerable to deploy, but the fact of the matter is that most of us technical specialists don’t have to go unless we ask to. In my career field, for instance, there are so few overseas slots that getting into them can be quite competitive. I think it works similarly for the engineers as well.

But about deployments and suicide… I see how it could happen. I knew a large number of people in the Embassy, when I was there, who were taking various forms of medication for anxiety, depression, insomnia… there’s something inherently soul-crushing about knowing that your life is in this place, day after day, week after week, and there’s no foreseeable release… for us who were on the 6-month tours, the light at the end of the tunnel was never too far away, but for the year-longers, especially right after they returned from their two weeks of R&R, you could see it was just too much. And so many of them were on their second or even third deployments, too!

In fact, in front of the Embassy clinic, there was a sign pictorally warning against self-inflicted gunshot wounds (in case anyone got the bright idea of shooting themselves in the foot in order to go home). Arrrgh! I can’t imagine contemplating such a measure, but I know that it happened.

I wonder if all these “kinder, gentler” standards we’ve been adopting into the military, all about tolerance and equality and fairness and letting your voice be heard, and zero-tolerance for discrimination, hazing, harassment, etc… It’s not that I think any of those things are a good thing to have going on, but I do wonder if eliminating them entirely has led to our fighting forces not having the necessary mental toughness to fight long, hard, painful wars. But then again, as I think over my history of American wars, no group of veterans has been unscathed by the psychological effects of war. Perhaps knowing that they’re not crazy and they’re not “soft”, it’ll help them get healthy more quickly on the back end?

I am curious, I must say, about when we’re all going to have mandatory PTSD checks. It sounds like some of the rhetoric is aiming in that direction… and for whatever reason, these sorts of public education and public health strategies are always very tempting for people to try out on the military. (As a large, compliant, government-controlled population of guinea pigs, perhaps???) I mean, just the fact that we’re having required annual Suicide and Violence Awareness and Prevention education should tell you something…

Explore posts in the same categories: Anxiety, Deployment, Military, War