A few SOF personnel and I have been working on figuring out how to reduce non-war deaths. It occurs to me that this problem might be universal, and not a SOF problem. We’re getting nowhere, but learning. I’m talking suicides and other BH related deaths.
PM me if you have experience sorting this out, statistics, headshrinker experience, LE data, coroner reports, anything. I’m eventually going to form a Joint Combined working group on Signal. I’m super tired of dudes dying, and many of us are.
Thank you for doing the work.
I wasn’t doing great when I got back. My experience at a vet center was.
A clear understanding that I was different, that was a natural response to environment I was in, and it wasn’t just going to go back to “normal” was really the key for me. So I had to work towards who I wanted to be.
Thanks.
I would agree with Todd.K, understanding that what you went through caused your brain to rewire itself for your survival, was key for me.
Not everyone comes home to a good situation, that part you can’t control.
I have zero helpful experience. It’s definitely not just SOF but I do believe it’s different groups and types of people between SOF and conventional though.
My conventional time, it was the young kids with the stereotypical life struggles. Distance from home, money, significant other or lack thereof, lack of friends, work stress, etc.
My SOF time, it was all senior NCOs. All combat vets, all actual operators as opposed to support.
I only have a few years of each but the impact of suicides while I was at USASOC was far more difficult, for a few reasons. I went to too many memorials and I have friends that have been to more. Most things in life get easier the more it happens, I think this has gotten harder. Every additional one feels heavier to me and because of the ones I had personal experience with, it doesn’t really matter whether I knew them or not. It still hits close to home. And every single person seems like they feel the same way so you see others feeling it and that makes it harder. And then you see friends and people you know and respect feeling it and it’s harder still.
One of my best friends called me last week to work through this with one of her friends. I never met him as he left my former unit before I got there but it doesn’t matter. I heard it in her voice and know of the pain.
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Is there any veteran suicide data on which branches of service have higher/lower rates as well as which MOS’s?
From what I’ve learned the non combat MOS’s are just as susceptible to the suicide trend as the combat MOS’s.
Personally I think it’s more of a societal problem and obviously thats where the mil gets its people.
Our suicide rate has been much higher for many years now IIRC. Society may be a part of it but it’s probably hard to say that it’s mostly society.
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I’m on the LE side and after close to 20 years I’ve been to more suicides than I care to remember. I’ve lost LE friends to suicide and I work side by side with a lot of veterans. I’m a member of our peer support team at work and attend seminars and network with a lot my counterparts. Many of the vets I work with saw combat in various forms and many who did not. From my personal and work experience I see a big difference between the two groups PTSD wise. With the combat vets feeling the effects of PTSD much more. Most are Army or Marine Corp.
But the overwhelming reason I see why people commit suicide is from that feeling of being lost and hopeless. That feeling of not having purpose, being a burden, or being different. And that is for everyone, vets included. So if you want to begin to understand you start there and work backwards. But it’s a little different for everyone.
There’s a lot of new research being done with the brain in regards to PTSD. We should see some studies in the couple of years. They’re finally really understanding what happens to the brain when someone is exposed to something traumatic. Finally seeing how the brain becomes injured or damaged and how important it is to begin treatment sooner rather than later. There’s some new techniques involving the use of mushrooms (psilocybin) which sound hopeful. What concerns me about this is it’s very difficult to get consistent doses with naturally growing plants. You don’t want to take too much or too little. It’s not regulated pharmaceutically so to speak. Also other treatments such as EMDR have been shown to be very helpful.
But going back to the vets. I think Todd K summed it up very well. The vets I work with who sometimes need some help have been great about seeking it and actually have good things to say about the VA.
The biggest thing one can do for suicide prevention is to stress to everyone that it’s okay and acceptable to go talk to someone. I’ve worked a lot of suicides where family and friends noticed something different but never took the time to call or make a visit to check in on them. Conversely I’ve met a lot of folks who have been suicidal and didn’t commit suicide because they did have a friend or loved one check in on them and just spend some time with them. And that’s all it took to get them through that moment. I think most folks, myself included, are so busy in our every day lives we forget if we haven’t heard from someone in awhile and to stop and check in on them. I work with a non profit veteran group whose mission is to prevent suicides by forming networks and groups to help with this. They’ve been doing a great job.
1168- I applaud you for taking action. A lot of folks do a lot of talking. Few choose to walk the walk. Feel free to PM if you want more insight.
Societal as in socially acceptable to commit suicide? Societal as in not socially acceptable to seek help? Societal is a pretty broad term. I’m not being snarky just not quite sure what you mean by societal.
Societal Problem, I dunno if it’s that or a cold dose of reality.
You know you go away and when you come back nothings the same, nothing. That loss and I mean the loss of your marriage, kids all that, poof it’s all out the window.
Then you get to unpack a duffle bag of weirdness you keep in your head, while you try and get your life together and continue to serve.
It’s a very dangerous place to be in, very dangerous.
People have a tendency to use sex, alcohol or drugs to find some sort of momentery pause, yeah pretty dangerous.
I had a former Soldier of mine who passed away about a year ago, young kid, he and his twin brother were solid in the infantry unit I was 1SG of. The two brothers were always on Advon missions, volunteering for everything, they worked at the armory when it was used as a homeless shelter. I don’t know the details of his death, just that it was sudden, I think I remember something about it being his heart (vax? Don’t know) I was already retired so I didn’t get all the details. Think about him from time to time though, good quiet and dependable kid gone far to soon.
Life in America is and has been pretty easy for the last 50 years. Society has been trending towards coddling people in every way, everyone gets a participation trophy. Thats why when vets go to the third world it can be so shocking and leave such a lasting impression while to the people in the third world it’s normal. Two different realities. Here in America there is attempt to spare people from reality, to sanitize everything. After the last hurricane that hit Florida the first responders had PTSD because several people got swept away in the storm surge and they had to recover bodied from the beach. They said in an interview nobody should have to see something like that. I was thinking to myself thats reality, why should people be spared from it?
A while back I asked a retired Army Chaplain what kinds of difficulties he counseled vets with the most and he say by far it was separation from girlfriend/spouse and relationship issues. Far more than PTSD.
Here’s an applicable quote;
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
What we are seeing is mostly a result of 50 years of good times that have produced a weak society that doesn’t have a realistic world view about life.
I don’t know if I can agree with some of this. PTSD among first responders is a huge problem. Endemic. I had done about a dozen deployments as a shooter before I became a Paramedic. And my childhood can best be described as “traumatic”, even by common third-world standards. Which is EXTREMELY common among “first responders” and SOF shooters. Point is, my upbringing certainly didn’t make me soft, and I devoted most of my adult life to war, so I thought I was plenty calloused enough to be a medic and that helping people would be a net positive for my mental health. Boy, was I wrong, and I can say for sure that fishing recently living people out of the water can be real heavy, emotionally. I did EMS/LE/Fire for a few years, then got on the first plane smoking to a third world shithole that I could catch. I still paramedic periodically, but honestly, I prefer civil wars.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe in stress innoculation, and I often do that as part of my work, but I can definitely see dudes reflecting on recovering bodies off a beach, and it affecting their lives, without thinking that they are soft or weak because of that. There’s a couple spots in the County that I avoid because driving past flips an emotional switch. I actually have a spiel for students, trainees, and noobs about how they can turn back now, no shame, to save their mental health, marriage, and bodies when I ask them why they think they want to be medics.
Thanks, everyone for the replies, thus far.
How old are you?
38, for now.
As you are aware death is inseparable from life. It’s normal, even when it’s not natural. People have been killing each other forever.
In war, especially for shooters carnage is normal, dismemberment, corpses, destruction. Thats what you do to each other on purpose. It comes with the test young men are eager for.
I’m older than you and perhaps I’m callous. But it never made sense to me to train your body for war only to become a psychological casualty because you didn’t prepare yourself for the brutal emotional realities of the job and accept it for what it is. Throughout history it’s been this way. Life use to be much more brutal than its is now.
My dude, I literally participate in wars and am an experienced Paramedic. I’ve lost a lot of very close friends, and I’ve shot people straight in the face, and had unsuccessful rescues and resuscs. I understand that death is inevitable and normal. Doesn’t mean that as humans we don’t sometimes have problems dealing with that.
From the hundreds of SOF guys doing podcasts the biggest downfalls for them has been the loss of identity, loss of purpose, feeling useless, plus drug (pain & sleep) and alcohol addiction.
TBI is also a significant contributor.
Another one is the majority of these guys say war didn’t get real until they had their first close call or casualty. Why is that? A quick study of any war will tell you they all produce casualties and death on both sides. Maybe it’s that invincible feeling that just goes with being young and immature. The mil relies on this though which is partly why war is mostly a young mans endeavor.
There are a couple other components that set young men up for difficulty processing their experiences. One is being led to believe they are special. Special training, special units, etc. When they start taking casualties and friends start getting killed they have to come to terms with the fact they can be killed like any other soldier or unit. The second component is the fact that many times decisions are made by higher ups that are very unsound and impractical and put them at risk for nothing. Dying for nothing is hard to process. As an example, look at some of the remote FOBs that were literally indefensible that were eventually overrun which resulted in many KIA’s. Third is the realization one has after going from an 18yo to a 25-30yo and realizing you weren’t really fighting and sacrificing for your country after all. You come to understand that war is an extension of politics and politicians merely play chess with the lives of young men for political gains that usually turn out to be losses. Like Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Benghazi. This can be a bitter pill to swallow and process.
Time and distance helps facilitate some of these realizations which helps put things into a clearer perspective. It’s unfortunate that many become victims of the phycological and the emotional toll of war and life.
When I was a child in OSUT I remember almost scoffing at the notion of PTSD. Now, I’m concerned about those who have traumatic experiences but don’t suffer from the associated stress syndrome/disorder. That’s called being a sociopath. Regardless of how “hard” you are, normal people should have to work through a process of coping mechanisms to deal with these things. Those that are totally unaffected are not to be praised.
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Yeah, when I was young Soldier I thought PTSD was bullshit and people were just being bitches. It was very stigmatized in the Army and strictly taboo in the Regiment. If a provider brought it up, it was like being called a gay Covid leper and it became your most sensitive secret.
BH stuff is still somewhat stigmatized in the Army, and can sometimes be weaponized by overzealous personnel. There are reasons why Soldiers don’t trust BH.
prepare- You make some good observations on how society got to where it’s at. But I don’t necessarily agree with the fix of “rub some dirt it in kid” is the fix for everyone either. The retired Army chaplain you spoke with who said he counsels more vets on spousal separation. Yes, an example of rub some dirt in it. The vet who had his buddy’s body blown up next to him. No, rubbing dirt in it is not the fix. I’m a pretty callous guy but I don’t need to see the pics of a 6 month old baby girl who had to have her vagina and anus surgically reconstructed because her mothers boyfriend raped and sodomized the child to know that stuff happens. There’s a reason most departments have child crimes detectives on 5 year rotations. It doesn’t matter how tough you are, it will bother you. That’s what makes you a person and not just a human being. And if it doesn’t bother you, then you’re part of the small population that is an anomaly.
I often tell folks in my profession the moment you really stop caring about the people you’re responding to it’s probably the time to exit the profession. Society doesn’t want or need a bunch of first responders or soldiers who don’t care. Caring can bring out the best in people but it also makes one susceptible to PTSD and the issues that go with it. Not caring or pretending to not care is the body’s natural defense to traumatizing incidents.
Hard times create strong men. Absolutely agree. But are we supposed to constantly live in hard times so all that we are creating is strong men? That is the cycle of so called civilized societies. Periods of peace and prosperity brought by war and fighting. Only to repeat over and over. And the “strong men” created by hard times are generally not your loving and caring types. People are not light switches that flip back and forth instantly. And therein lies the problem with a lot of vets who saw combat.
You’ve identified some good points on how we got to where we are but haven’t offered much in the way of advancing from the current position.