USA — Army Guard Battles Soldier Suicides

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2010 — With 2010 sui­cide num­bers slight­ly above last year’s and com­ing off the worst Jan­u­ary on record, the Army Nation­al Guard is empha­siz­ing resilience, tran­si­tion pro­grams and the impor­tance of ask­ing for help.

Air Force Gen. Craig R. McKin­ley, left, chief of the Nation­al Guard Bureau, lis­tens as Army Maj. Gen. Ray­mond W. Car­pen­ter, act­ing direc­tor of the Army Nation­al Guard, tes­ti­fies before a March 24, 2010, hear­ing of the Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions Committee’s sub­com­mit­tee on defense in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. U.S. Army pho­to by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill

“We are alarmed by the sui­cide rates we’re see­ing inside the Army Nation­al Guard,” Army Maj. Gen. Ray­mond W. Car­pen­ter, the component’s act­ing direc­tor, told the Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions Committee’s sub­com­mit­tee on defense in March 24 testimony. 

Sui­cide con­founds easy expla­na­tion, and deploy­ment might not be the whole answer. 

“Almost half of the sui­cides we’re expe­ri­enc­ing are from sol­diers who haven’t even deployed,” Car­pen­ter said. “There’s more to this than just the mobi­liza­tion and deploy­ment piece.” 

Sen­a­tors and Nation­al Guard lead­ers dis­cussed unem­ploy­ment, finan­cial dis­tress, a chal­leng­ing econ­o­my and reluc­tance to ask for help as con­tribut­ing factors. 

Army Nation­al Guard sui­cides increased 75 per­cent in 2009, accord­ing to Sen. Daniel Inouye, the com­mit­tee chair. Car­pen­ter said 24 sui­cides are cur­rent­ly being inves­ti­gat­ed for 2010, a slight increase over the 22 who had tak­en their own lives dur­ing the same peri­od in 2009. 

“Our deploy­ing sol­diers and air­men are fac­ing chal­lenges that none of us on this pan­el cer­tain­ly ever did in our mil­i­tary careers,” said Air Force Gen. Craig R. McKin­ley, chief of the Nation­al Guard Bureau. “The stress­es, the strains, the finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, the times we live in, the stress on the fam­i­ly, the fact that we’ve had con­tin­u­ous rota­tions, obvi­ous­ly have cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment where many of our young sol­diers and air­men strug­gle to make ends meet.” 

The Air Nation­al Guard lever­ages Army Nation­al Guard pro­grams and adds its own ini­tia­tives, Air Force Lt. Gen. Har­ry M. Wyatt III, the direc­tor of the Air Nation­al Guard, said. Those include exist­ing wing fam­i­ly sup­port coor­di­na­tors and new behav­ioral health professionals. 

“These indi­vid­u­als will be pro­vid­ed to the adju­tants gen­er­al to be placed with­in their states at his or her direc­tion,” Wyatt explained. 

The Guard is mak­ing the behav­ioral health pro­fes­sion­als avail­able to all ser­vice­mem­bers. “It’s not just exclu­sive­ly a ser­vice pro­vid­ed to the Nation­al Guard,” Wyatt said. “It’s made avail­able to all mem­bers of the military.” 

The Air Guard also is work­ing to assure pro­grams at active duty bases and posts are avail­able to reservists. 

“Some of the return­ing Nation­al Guard mem­bers are not hon­est on their post-deploy­ment health assess­ments, sim­ply because they don’t want to be delayed going home,” Sen. Pat­ty Mur­ray noted. 

Car­pen­ter said the Army is reeval­u­at­ing those assess­ments – the first time a study has been done on the Guard and Reserve process in almost three decades. 

“The ini­tia­tive that’s being con­sid­ered at this point is for the sol­dier to be hon­est with what­ev­er emo­tion­al or phys­i­cal prob­lems they might have, be allowed to go home and be with their fam­i­lies, and then allow them to return to get the nec­es­sary treat­ment,” Car­pen­ter said. 

“There’s more to this war than just cross­ing the berm for Bagh­dad,” he said. “The bot­tom line … is prepar­ing peo­ple for sit­u­a­tions that are almost over­whelm­ing. … We’ve got to build a resilien­cy out there to be able to sus­tain those tough times and to be able to not look at sui­cide as a viable option.” 

Army Nation­al Guard pieces of the solu­tion include the active duty Army’s Sol­dier Fit­ness Pro­gram and a part­ner­ship with the Army Reserve in the Hel­mets to Hard­hats program. 

Indi­vid­ual states also have pio­neered pro­grams designed to reduce sol­dier and air­man sui­cides, such as the Kansas Nation­al Guard’s Flash For­ward and the Michi­gan Nation­al Guard’s Bud­dy to Bud­dy program. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs)