Suicide Prevention Day?

Complaining aout what the DOD has been "doing" to address military suicides, hasn't been enough to get them to change a thing no matter how many succeeded in doing it. Well, now you get a glimpse of one of these Stand Downs from someone who was there and wrote about it.

Suicide Prevention Day?
ASPIRING WRITERS, FEATURED, FEATURED WRITER
SEPTEMBER 29, 2012 BY ROB
27 September 2012

Last night I slept on the couch with my sick 3 year old daughter. As I was getting ready for work, my wife woke up with a fever and our baby might have a sinus infection. When my wife asked if I could stay home to help out, I said I can’t… but I would try to get home early. I couldn’t stay home because today is Stand Down for Suicide Day across the entire United States Army.

Today is a great opportunity for Soldiers to stand as one and come together to battle a growing epidemic. The importance of this day has been brought up over the past few weeks and I even received a mass email from General Odierno on my AKO.

I don’t want to talk about the reasoning of this day and what it means, because I can’t stress the importance enough. Rather, I want to talk about HOW the Army goes about training its Soldiers… and why it doesn’t work.

I won’t identify my Brigade because I don’t think that’s fair. Besides, this situation could’ve happened in any unit. As part of Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC), our place of duty this morning was the BDE Chapel. I had hope that we could take this topic seriously, or at the very least escape the office for an hour or two. The acting HHC Company Commander was in charge of leading the training which included the “Shoulder to Shoulder” video and a PowerPoint presentation that would spark conversation. Unfortunately, he was told THAT MORNING he would be responsible for this task (for the record, he did a great job under the circumstances). He asked me to help because he knew I had dealt with situations of suicide before.

When the time came to address the group and share stories, I had a plan of telling the group about SSG Montgomery, or my sister, or even my brushes with suicidal thoughts. I was prepared to pour my heart out in an attempt to possibly make a larger impact then strangers in a video. But not with an audience that wasn’t willing to listen. I think this attitude is one of the biggest problems with suicide in the Army…

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