Resiliency training bullshit is great for getting them from one fight to another but most make it home and then fall apart. It is not that suddenly they get hit with what they just went through, but it is more at time when they allow themselves to feel it. Their friends are back home and out of danger so they allow themselves to wake up and feel again.
Any idea how much it takes to be able to do that?
Resiliency training gets them through combat but it makes coming home worse when it feeds that same quality that allows them to do what they do and then feeds the pain of knowing they need help but can't ask for it. The suicides will keep going up until they come up with the real answers and programs that will help them to believe in themselves again.
Soldier Suicide: The Stigma to Seeking Help
The biggest barrier to preventing suicide among our service members and veterans is countering the disciplined self-reliance that they've been trained to embrace
By RAJIV SRINIVASAN
July 12, 2012
It’s never a highly publicized affair on a military post. When we pass through our commissary and pick up the installation newsletter, we are used to seeing an official photograph of a soldier, their obituary, their age — typically under 30. But more and more frequently, the words “killed in action” will be conspicuously missing from the narrative, and other clues will eliminate the possibility of a training accident or drug use or a car crash.
The complexity of solving our veteran mental health crisis is not a question of the availability of services, it’s in encouraging soldiers to use those services. How do we tell someone who has been shot at and blown up for multiple tours of duty that the biggest danger they face now is themselves? For me, my mind was strong enough to get me through combat. It was the ultimate weapon against complacency and emotional breakdown. My mind was my saving grace, and to hear that it was now my biggest burden when I returned from a tour with post-traumatic stress sounded like a joke. Besides, I didn’t even have it that bad. We saw a lot of fights, but I came home in one piece; but many of my company-mates did not. How was I supposed to sit in a hospital waiting room to cry to a doctor about my bad dreams when there were soldiers with amputated legs sitting next to me?
But my mother and girlfriend wouldn’t take no for an answer. I started going to see a counselor. But I was about to transfer posts (as most soldiers do within six months of a deployment) so we decided not to do much more than talk from time to time. When I finally moved to my new posting, took a month of leave, and settled into my new job, there was enough stimuli around me to make me feel like I didn’t need anything else. And so when I started having trouble sleeping, over indulging in food and alcohol, and pushing away family and friends, I drowned myself in work to keep myself so busy that I wouldn’t think about the underlying causes of my behavior.
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