What have we learned during Suicide Awareness Month?

What have we learned during Suicide Awareness Month?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 26, 2013

Twenty-six days into this month when we were supposed to be made aware of what is going on has left many of us worse than feeling empty. It feels as if all these years were just a waste of time. It sure has been a waste of money since apparently the Army thinks "Some of it is just personal make-up. Intestinal fortitude. Mental toughness that ensures that people are able to deal with stressful situations." Topped off with they lack a loving family like Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told David Wood of the Huffington Post in an interview.

If that is the case then Odierno should have alerted the Pentagon and Congress they didn't need all the funds to pay for stuff since it was the fault of the soldiers they died by their own hands. Bet the people responsible for the over 900 suicides prevention programs taking in billions a year got a big chuckle out of ripping off the treasury for something they didn't need to do. After all, they really got a kick out of it when they kept getting the money even after the suicides and attempted suicides went up.

I am not sure if it is more sickening than frightening right now.

Imagine being one of the survivors of military suicide and reading what Odierno thinks about them. Imagine being one of the family members already dealing with all the questions left behind while blaming themselves because someone they loved didn't want to stay alive anymore. After all, that happens more than 55 times a day without even counting the active duty forces or the Army National Guards and Army Reservists that keep being left out of the totals the press uses.

The Army has not released the August report for Army, Army National Guards and Army Reservists suicides as of today. What bothers most more is the fact the Department of Defense hasn't even bothered to release the full report for 2012 for all branches yet. We don't know how many committed suicide or how many attempted it. There were over 900 attempts in 2011.

While more and more people do care about this more and more are under some kind of grand delusion the military gets it. How could they? How could they even begin to understand what they have been claiming to fight against since 2008 when someone like Odierno comes out with that kind of crap they used to use during the Civil war when traumatized troops were shot for being cowards.

Where is common sense in all of this? Programs don't work so they push the programs that already failed. They tell the troops asking for help is not a sign of weakness but then Odierno says it is.

I hope all of this sinks in enough so all of us know when it comes to taking care of the men and women risking their lives for each other every day, the military really doesn't care. If they did, Odierno would be forced to resign and take all the others with him. His record sucks on paying attention but his record as a leader has been vandalized by his ignorance.

All the hacks out there pushing Comprehensive Soldier Fitness and what the military has been doing are also responsible for this deadly outcome.

Every time you read what one of them has to say, just look up the record of what they are getting away with claiming and know there is much more to what they say than the saving lives.

As for me, well, I am only more aware that one thing Odierno got right is the fact the suicides won't go down just because the war in Afghanistan will end. After all, the war on suicides was lost back when they started pushing a program still in research stages designed for school kids to give them more self esteem. Don't take my word for it but you can read at least this for yourself. The Dark Side of “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness”

Here is a taste of what experts I track have been talking about.

Also problematic, the CSF program is adapted primarily from the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP) where interventions were focused on dramatically different, non-military populations. Even with these groups, a 2009 meta-analysis of 17 controlled studies reveals that the PRP program has been only modestly and inconsistently effective. PRP produced small reductions in mild self-reported depressive symptoms, but it did so only in children already identified as at high risk for depression and not for those from the general population. Nor did PRP interventions reduce symptoms more than comparison prevention programs based on other principles, raising questions as to whether PRP's effects are related to the "resilience" theory undergirding the program. Further, like many experimental programs, PRP had better outcomes when administered by highly trained research staff than when given by staff recruited from the community. This raises doubts as to how effectively the CSF program will be administered by non-commissioned officers who are required to serve as "Master Resilience Trainers."

So they die because the military used a research project for school kids, inflicted it on our troops, and then blamed them for what the result was. That is what we learned this month.