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The Military’s Suicide Epidemic is America’s Suicide Epidemic
Why suicide prevention measures in the US Armed Forces are failing, and one potential solution to fix them
Leadership across the Department of Defense (DOD) is desperate to curb the ever-rising suicide rate among Active Duty, Guard, Reserve and veterans of the military. The Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and each of the five component chiefs have separately addressed the issue in symposiums, seminars, and on social media. Yet, the rate keeps climbing.
As senior leaders grow more and more desperate to decrease the rate at which US service members are dying by suicide, they’ve begun to shift their tone from one of declaration (“here is how we’re going to decrease the suicide rate!”) to one of inquiry (“please, tell us what we need to do to make this happen.”).
Based on my own experience in the military, I believe that perhaps the answer lies outside DOD. It may seem that our most senior military officers do not know what is causing the rates of suicide to continue to climb within DOD, but it is more likely that the struggle lies more in knowing how to address the fundamental shift in American culture from within DOD. I want to stress that this is not in any way meant to suggest that I’m laying the…
