Air Force "Suicide Prevention" More of the Same

UPDATE
1st Quarter 2015

In the first quarter of 2015, there were 57 suicides among service members in the active component, 15 suicides among service members in the reserve component and 27 suicides among service members in the National Guard.

2nd Quarter 2015

In the second quarter of 2015, there were 71 suicides among service members in the active component, 20 suicides among service members in the reserve component and 27 suicides among service members in the National Guard.

Just a thought but maybe they should consider dumping what has produced more suicides with less serving after all these years.
Third Quarter DOD Suicide Report (2014)

The report shows that there were 56 total suicides among active-duty components from all branches of the military combined. There were 31 suicides in the Army, 12 in the Air Force, seven in the Navy and six in the Marine Corps.

While high, the third quarter count is significantly lower than each of the first two quarters of 2014. The first quarter suicide count for active duty components was 74, and the second quarter was 70.

Among the Reserve component for the third quarter there were 20 suicides: 15 from the Army Reserve, three from the Air Force Reserve and one each from the Navy Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve.

There were also 26 suicides among members of the National Guard during the third quarter, including 23 in the Army National Guard and three from the Air National Guard.

Air Force Secretary James outlines suicide prevention initiatives
Air Force Times
Staff report
December 8, 2015

Given the statistics, "whatever we have been doing is certainly not enough and we need to refocus and kick it up a notch and look for new and different ways to approach it," Deborah Lee James

Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James

(Photo: Senior Master Sgt. Adrian Cadiz/DoD)

Suicides, which number 273 across the active-duty military so far this year, are an issue "we all need to be worried about," Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said Tuesday in a town hall meeting with airmen.

She outlined three initiatives the service is undertaking to prevent such deaths:

"We're going to try to do a better job of screening some of your younger airmen, at the tech school level and try to identify people who seem to be having difficulties ... in problem solving perhaps, coping and try to put a little bit more help and assistance for some of those airmen."

"On the medical front we are looking to offer more full-up medical screening for those who actually come to us with certain problems and tell us they need help. We're going to give them a more complete medical screening and medical support service."

"We will be building up what we call prevention specialists at bases around the country and the job of the prevention specialists will be to try to pull together the various helping resources and streamline some of the training programs that are out there because what we've realized is that we have sexual assault training, we have suicide prevention training, we have resilience training ... but there is overlap.
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