Years ago I was writing a regular (or irregular) column for a military publication. My column on suicide prevention and the desperate need for it generated much response, most especially from airmen and soldiers who were stationed overseas in Desert Storm. They sent me emails and told me how desperate they sometimes felt, and how there was so little help for them. That column was later used in a suicide prevention course.
Fat lot of good it did.
Years earlier, many years earlier, I was stationed at my first post, and I was despondent, off and on. Occasionally, and sometimes, usually, I was quite happy. Someone overheard me say something that they took for a wish for suicide, which it wasn't -- believe me, I wouldn't deny it if it had been. I am no stranger to depression. But they believed it, and they called my commander, and next thing I knew I was escorted to the post clinic and then to Ft Ord for further questioning, just in case. I promised not to harm myself, I promised them that I had no intention of harming myself, and eventually they let me go.
How embarrassing. But better alive than dead, no? On the other hand, how easy it would have been to tell them I was fine, walk away, and then off myself. How very easy.
We can't tell what's in someone's head.
Years later I found myself encouraging my ex-husband to have faith in a life he couldn't find any joy in. His suicidal ideations were frequent and all consuming, and I paid such close attention to his every mood to ensure I could keep him going that I myself eventually needed psychiatric help. Again, in a mental health clinic, promising not to hurt myself. I had no motivation to hurt myself -- I was just tired and worn out and I was empty. If I'd had enough energy I might have considered it, I don't know. But I didn't.
Not that I never have. There have been times when I thought the world would be better off without me in it. Those times are in the past, fortunately.
My ex fought the idea of suicide for years, along with major mental illness. Eventually cancer got him instead, which just goes to show. Something's going to get you in the end.
Still, in most cases, putting the end off until it's something physical that takes us is a better choice. The mental pain that comes with being suicidal is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. There's no room there for giving oneself a break, no space for considering alternatives, no space for anything other than the overwhelming thought that life would be better if one weren't actually living it.
In the military especially mental illness is considered a weakness. I know, I've been there. Best to push it under the rug just a little so no one will see it. We ignore it. We push it away. We tell people to just get over it, as if they wouldn't if they could. No one wants to be in that kind of pain. I'd like to think we've made progress, but the numbers of military suicides don't indicate we have. War sucks. War sucks especially if you're in the middle of it.
Is this the best we can do for people we send to war?
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Ann Nichols
Zul
iamsurly
Ronald Allan
Donna Carbone
Military Missions
Salon.com
Comments
Soldiers need exceptional care - care that is the exception. There are so many factors to bring in, not least of which is expertise in discharging firearms.
PTSD and brain injuries are the most common diagnoses - and there's a general lack of care or understanding about the two wars.
Thanks for highlighting your experiences.
I love it when you post. I feel as if we're having a conversation, because I am nodding along with you.
Take care.
Lezlie
Why can't people just get along? Eat ice cream instead of shooting bullets at each other!! ~nodding~
And the stuff on suicide, bravo! It's true....
Rated. Tink Picked too!!!
Years ago when I was first diagnosed with depression I was so relieved, because it meant that the pain I was having, which was both physical and mental, could be treated and fixed. My stepmother said to me, when I told her, "Just pull yourself out of it!" as if I could just will it away, if I were of stronger character. Then again, she always found me lacking.
For someone to come back from a war which they may have to return to, with such feelings of despair and isolation (because a depressive always feels alone), and to be treated as if it's a character defect, must be so difficult. It exacerbates the problem, it makes them spiral downward. I've had people die on me, literally, but they weren't blown apart, and their deaths weren't unexpected. Military members experience so much that even I can't relate to -- there was no war when I was in.
I don't have any answers, just lots of questions.
I think if we can separate the soldiers from seeing other people get hurt when they return it would help. If we could give them a little time and breathing room around kindness it would give them time to heal. We had one poor guy here and I don't remember what happened something about protecting his dog, but he started shooting up his apartment building. Luckily he didn't hit any neighbors and thank God he didn't kill himself, I think he's getting help.
I also remember when I was in the Corps it was very team oriented. The guy beside you would keep you alive. When you get out you have to learn to work in Corporate America and live in the real world, it's every man for himself. People will viciously cut you off for just a parking space, then they laugh at you. The guy working next to you is your enemy in the next round of promotions or layoffs. It's hard to learn the every man for himself mentality. One minute you're best friends, the next you're a casualty. There are different survival skills in the military and in the real world. In the end it's still kill or be killed.
O'Really is right, we are all disposable. Even Generals are easily thrown in the trash, we have a lot of them too. That's the scariest part, there are no answers. I find that terribly depressing.
Personally, I think the problem is that many people are joining the military who really aren't ideal military types, and the depression they feel is a result. We also have lots of civilian contractors and such living on base who can't deal with the regimented, communitarian lifestyle and existence.
Alot of the adjustment problems that all these people face, comes not from the horrors of war, but social problems stemming from their inability to live in such an atmosphere. In a sense, this is inevitable with modern society. A century ago, most people still lived in small, tight-knit rural villages and towns, where everybody knew everybody's business and life was less fluid, more regimented and strict, as one would expect on a farm, when the chores often follow the strict cycles of nature and weather. Everybody was also into everybody else's business.
Today, very few Americans, even those who have or do live in dormatories of some sort, experience this sort of regimentation. Today, most Americans have over-developed egos, a much larger sense of personal space and privacy than any other people on earth, as well as more than any previous generation of Americans.
From what I have read on this subject in military psychological reports and stuff from NIH and documents from WW2 that I read in college about mental health and soldiers, is that the vast majority of these mental health issues result from the abovementioned or similar such situations, namely, our soldier's prior existence in a modern urban liberal culture ill-prepares them for the type of social existence prevalent on base or in barracks.
Realistically, even folks in the Civil War had a hard time adjusting. But the fact is that people from rural communities, large families and the like have less difficulty in being adjusted.
In terms of withstanding the gore of war, there is also much evidence available showing that farm folk that are accustomed to slaughtering livestock and such are far less traumatized by blood and guts than sensitive urban dwellers. This has always been the case. Even today, cultures in the US Army where animal slaughter is a widespread, conspicuous community practice, whether among Chinese-Americans or various Latin-AMerican groups, these groups suffer far less emotional trauma than the middle class white folks in the army, who have probably never seen blood or entrails before.
I think this is all just further evidence that our culture is "advancing" to a point where the commonly understood and accepted means and methods of warfare are out of synch with the mores of said culture. There is a disconnect. Folks on the right wing say that this means we need to expose more people to brutal violence and killing more often, to desensitize them. Liberals think this is good, because the growing cultural revulsion against violence and conformity will create a society of pacifistic humanists. Socialists probably fall somewhere in the middle.
THat being said, this is mostly an issue of cultural disconnect. Modern Bourgeois cosmopolitanism is a bad prep-course for the invasiveness and regimentation of military life. Many can't deal with it.
Thank you. Thank you.
And Monique? You did do a lot of good.
Just the other day, I was telling a n Army veteran friend of mine some stories my grandfather related to me about being int he 101st Airborne during WWII. At the end of our conversation he said, "Though I was a soldier, I'm glad I never had to go to war."
I looked him in the eye and said, "I am, too."
During the Civil War, in which both sides were convinced of the rightness of their cause, despite the horrific circumstances of the conflict, the vast majority of the veterans (except for those who were addicted to paregoric (tincture of opium) were able to put the war behind them and, as often as not, dine out on their fading glory as veterans of the conflict.
In World War I, where there were no clear ideological issues, there were substantially more veterans with psychiatric conditions after the war ended, because neither side could really claim the moral high ground.
In World War II, there's no question that the Allies had the moral high ground, and the percentage of psychiatric issues among the Allied troops were proportionately lower, largely due to the ideological issues involved.
In both of these cases, soldiers served for the duration of the conflict, which meant that soldiers inducted in January of 1942 faced three long years of war before they could go home. Nevertheless, efforts were made rotate troops from the front lines to the rear echelons.
During the Vietnam era, you did your twelve months and when you were done, you were done, unless you volunteered to go back for another tour there....which made it easier for soldiers to deal with the moral ambiguities of that conflict.
Now, with these current conflicts, we are sending second line troops - reservists - back for second and third tours, and pressing charges against those who refuse to go back again.
This, coupled with the very ambiguous moral circumstances of these conflicts, has vastly increased the percentage of returning veterans who experience psychiatric problems.
War is hell. It destroys people physically and mentally. If this were not so, we would be in a constant state of war.
Wait a minute. We are in a constant state of war....and we are all suffering the consequences thereof.
In this technological age, there's no excuse for keeping boots on the ground in places where we have no vested interests.
Sending soldiers back into this conflict for a second and third tour is tantamount to involuntary servitude.
War is an ugly thing, true. But what is even uglier is that after we send these brave young men and women off to war we leave them to pick up the pieces on their own. This is disgraceful in my eyes and I pray that others do not have to experience the pain and loss that come along with suicide. Tom was seeking help for a long time for his PTDS and TBI, but in the end it was not enough. Thank you for bringing even more awareness to this issue.