Army works to reduce soldiers' suicides, increase available help

Army works to reduce soldiers' suicides, increase available help
Published: Saturday, October 06, 2012
By DAN MILLER
The Patriot-News

Acting to address the chilling number of suicides among soldiers, the U.S. Army is responding rapidly to help troops cope with traumatic events and placing a greater focus on mental health.

Col. Glenn Waters, a student at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, shares a story about what the Army is doing right.

On Dec. 30, 2008, a sniper’s bullet slammed into the head of a 21-year-old U.S. Army soldier in downtown Tikrit, Iraq. He was in the turret of a vehicle providing security for the rest of a patrol that was meeting with Iraqi leaders to bring clean water to a hospital.

A staff sergeant and a medic tried to keep the soldier alive as drivers raced back to base as fast as possible through the dense traffic in the city of 3 million people. Waters, then a battalion commander, pulled up at the Army hospital where the young man was being treated. He could see the pain on the faces of the other soldiers. “I pulled everybody in. The first thing we did was say a prayer for the soldier who was shot,” Waters said.

Then, he encouraged the soldiers to talk about what they were feeling, right there. One soldier pulled Waters over to the vehicle. He wanted to show him the blood.

The chaplain spent that night with the patrol. The next day, an Army behavioral health team came in, bringing in companion dogs to get the soldiers to open up and talk. “We kind of locked those guys down for a couple of days,” Waters said.
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