Army seeks help of AF, civilians on suicides

Army seeks help of Air Force, civilians on suicides?


A good place to start is to

GET RID OF BATTLEMIND! It does not work! How much longer do they need to see the suicide and attempted suicide rate go up instead of down to figure out it does not work. This is not a matter of "it's better than nothing" because evidence shows it's worse than nothing.

I posted how a few days ago I was at the VA hospital with my husband and met a couple of Marines back from Iraq. I had a lengthy conversation with one of them who was having a very hard time. I had on my chaplain shirt, so it was obvious to him he could talk to me freely. He apologized for crying. He said Marines are trained to be tough and strong. Battlemind enforces this ideology that any emotion was bad. They need to stop using this program. They need to do what has been working. Videos like mine help just as a lot of others on the net have been working. They are saving lives. The Montana National Guard has a program that is working.

I've done 15 posts on the Montana National Guard stepping up.

http://woundedtimes.blogspot.com/search?q=Montana+National+Guard

Maj. Gen. Randy Mosley is a hero in all of this so much so that Senator Obama went there to find out more about the program and Chris Dana. Chris Dana's death started the program they have been doing. His life and suicide touched the commanders so much they knew they had to do something above what was being done and not working. They began Picking Up the Pieces.

If the DOD and the VA are serious about finding out what works, they need to talk to the people on the front lines of this to really find out and stop making the same mistakes over and over again.

Army seeks help of AF, civilians on suicides

By Dan Elliott - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Sep 11, 2008 5:49:37 EDT

DENVER — The Army’s top medical officer says commanders are looking to their counterparts in the Air Force and in civilian agencies for ways to cope with an alarming increase in suicides.

“We work real closely with the Veterans Administration, who have for many years taken the lead in this,” Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “We’ve also looked across the services and at other models that have been more successful than our own.”

The Army’s suicide rate was 18.1 per 100,000 last year, the highest since the service started keeping records in 1980. It was 9.8 just five years earlier.

The U.S. civilian rate is 19.5 per 100,000.

Leading factors behind soldier suicides are troubled personal relationships; legal, financial and work problems; and repeated deployments and longer tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army says.

Schoomaker said the Army has redoubled its prevention efforts and looked outside for new models, especially to the Air Force, which he said successfully encouraged support systems to reduce suicides.

The Army’s program includes removing the stigma from asking for help, encouraging soldiers to look after each other and a campaign called ACE, for Ask, Care and Escort.
go here for more
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/ap_suicides_091008/