Why The Military’s Approach To Its Suicide Epidemic Is Failing

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"MILITARY TIMES" By Ken Falke

"DOD active-duty suicides rose from 331 in 2022 to 363 in 2023, an epidemic that has grown across the U.S. military over the past decade. An approach is required that redefines leadership, revamps training and fosters an environment of openness and mutual support."

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"Editor’s note: This report contains discussion of suicide. Troops, veterans and family members experiencing suicidal thoughts can call the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 and dial 1, text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.

This week, the Department of Defense released their 2023 suicide data, showing that active-duty suicides rose from 331 in 2022 to 363 in 2023. In a Military Times article about the increase, a Pentagon spokesperson sought to downplay the report and stated that the increase is not “statistically significant.”

It is difficult to find words to describe how outrageous, disgusting and inappropriate such a response is — particularly in the face of a suicide epidemic that has grown across the U.S. military over the past decade.

This epidemic continues despite the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars on prevention programs, awareness initiatives and various other efforts. And it’s happening within an institution that prides itself on leadership, discipline, strength and resolve.

The simple truth is this: What the Defense Department is doing to prevent suicide is not working. If we want to truly address the problem of military suicide, a comprehensive rethinking is required.

Implementing emotional intelligence training in the military can significantly support suicide prevention by fostering a culture of awareness and empathy. The first step is to integrate emotional intelligence into the existing training and leadership continuum, beginning in basic training.

Recruits should be taught to recognize and manage their emotions, which can help reduce impulsive behavior and stress during crises. Additionally, leaders at all levels must be trained to identify emotional distress in their subordinates, engage in active listening and offer support and resources.

Cultivating an environment where emotional intelligence is valued can foster trust and teach soldiers to seek help before reaching a crisis point. This means creating training modules that teach service members how to recognize their own emotional struggles, how to identify signs of burnout and how to access mental health resources before issues escalate.

Rather than solely focusing on “toughening up,” military training should incorporate emotional intelligence and strategies for managing stress, anger, depression, anxiety and grief.

While mental health and public health experts bring valuable knowledge to suicide prevention, it’s essential to reconsider their dominant role in leadership positions. These experts focus on clinical or policy-driven approaches, which overlook the lived experiences and social contexts that contribute to suicidal ideation.

Effective suicide prevention requires a broader, more holistic approach that incorporates diverse perspectives, including those from individuals with lived experience, community leaders and those affected by systemic issues like poverty, discrimination and isolation.

Individuals who understand the complexities of suicide prevention beyond clinical frameworks can create more effective, empathetic and comprehensive solutions that resonate with at-risk populations.

We must stop comparing the public to the military regarding suicide because the experiences, pressures and environments of military personnel are fundamentally different than those of their civilian counterparts.

Military service members face unique stressors, such as combat exposure, deployments and a highly structured, high-risk environment, which can have profound psychological effects.

The stigma surrounding mental health in the military, combined with intense demands, often leads to delayed help-seeking behaviors and increased suicide risk.

In contrast, while civilians face their own challenges, their daily lives generally lack the extreme pressures, trauma and consequences of military service.

Comparing the two groups oversimplifies the issue and ignores the specific needs and circumstances of military personnel. Suicide prevention efforts must be tailored to the distinct realities of military life.

I am also convinced that our language around suicide prevention is a key factor in our inability to reach our military recruiting goals.

The term “resilience” has, unfortunately, become a four-letter word in the military lexicon, with the focus on resiliency more of a buzzword than an actionable strategy.

Most people don’t even know what the word means. At its core, resilience means “to bounce back.” Unfortunately, the military has expanded this definition to mean resistance to trauma. This is just not true.

Replacing resiliency with something akin to “mental toughness” or “navigating adversity” should be a priority. After all, service members are expected to operate under extreme conditions. They are asked to endure physical and emotional hardships in service to their country, and the military prides itself on producing men and women who can navigate adversity.

But when the concept of resilience becomes a blanket expectation rather than a practical support system, it risks doing more harm than good.

Ultimately, fixing the military suicide epidemic requires a new approach — one that redefines leadership, revamps training and fosters an environment of openness and mutual support.

Only then will we begin to reverse the devastating trend of military suicides and create a system that truly supports the men and women who serve our country.

The military is known for its leadership, discipline and strength. I hope our next defense secretary will realize that our current approach is not working. The time to act is now, before more lives are lost."

https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/2024/11/21/why-the-militarys-approach-to-its-suicide-epidemic-is-failing/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 

 Ken Falke is founder and chairman of Boulder Crest Foundation, and is the author of “Struggle Well, Thriving in the Aftermath of Trauma.”

Have A Positive Thinking Thanksgiving

A Modest Proposal - The Pentagon Should Follow Boeing's Lead

 

"THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT By Mark Thompson

"Embarrassments like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with flubbed programs like the F-35 fighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Army’s repeated failure to replace its Bradley Fighting Vehicles rate right up there with Boeing’s blunders."

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"Boeing, the Pentagon’s #4 contractor, was once an icon of American ingenuity and industrial prowess. But it has never recovered from the tailspin following its 1997 merger with bottom-line-obsessed McDonnell Douglas. Its new Air Force Ones and aerial tankers have hit heavy turbulence. Two of its 737 MAX airliners crashed. A fuselage panel blew off one of its jets. Safety concerns about its Starliner space capsule have left two astronauts stranded in space. Its biggest union remains on strike.

Last week, Boeing decided to pull its head out of its afterburner. The decision came as the company confirmed it had lost $2 billion on defense work over the prior three months. “I think that we're better off doing less, and doing it better, than doing more and not doing it well,” brand-new Boeing boss Kelly Ortberg said October 23. To right its flailing business, Boeing plans to shed pieces of the company, likely including some of its space programs.

The U.S. and its Department of Defense should take a lesson from Ortberg. After all, embarrassments like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with flubbed programs like the F-35 fighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Army’s repeated failure to replace its Bradley Fighting Vehicles rate right up there with Boeing’s blunders.

The U.S. was the global colossus following World War II. While it accounted for 40% of the world’s economic output in 1960, that share has fallen to 26% today. Yet Washington still sees itself as the world cop, spending close to $1 trillion annually on its military, more than the next 10 countries combined. It has more than 170,000 troops based in 178 countries around the world and sold a record $238 billion in weapons to many of them last year.

The U.S. national-security state and U.S. national-security think tanks churn out reports every year warning that the Pentagon is underfunded and that defeat is just around the corner. They all flow from official documents from the White House (PDF) and Pentagon that insist the U.S. must be ready to defend pretty much anything everywhere at any time.

The United States is the only country in the world that designs its military to be able to depart one hemisphere, cross broad expanses of ocean and air space, and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival in another hemisphere,” the Congressional Research Service said in an Oct. 2 assessment (PDF) exploring the size and cost of the U.S. military. “That U.S. policymakers for the past several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia does not necessarily mean this goal was a correct one for the United States to pursue, or that it would be a correct one for the United States to pursue in the future.”

Boeing’s decision to trim its flaps is rooted in humility that can mature into wisdom. The U.S. should follow suit."

POGO A MODEST PROPOSAL The Pentagon should follow Boeing’s lead

Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough for the Pentagon?

 

"FORBES" By William Hartung

"As each generation of weapons purchased by the Pentagon becomes more expensive and more complex, the U.S. armed forces shrink accordingly.  We need to force Washington to catch up with reality, and soon, or we will all pay a horrific price in blood and treasure."

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"Writing at Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of my organization, the Quincy Institute, my colleague Dan Grazier of the Stimson Center summarizes the dangers of the “Defense Death Spiral,” a phenomenon first warned of by a courageous group of defense reformers during the Reagan buildup of the 1980s.

The thesis is fairly simple – as each generation of weapons purchased by the Pentagon becomes more expensive and more complex, the U.S. armed forces shrink accordingly. As Grazier points out, the U.S. armed forces have half as many combat aircraft as they did in the mid-1970s, and fewer than half as many combat ships – all on a budget that is 60% higher than it was back then, adjusted for inflation. And contrary to the official story, it’s not clear that the quality of the new generation of weaponry has made up for the reduction in quantity, as evidenced by the subpar performances of major systems like the Littoral Combat Ship and the F-35.

The Pentagon’s attempt to supply weapons to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza while acquiring equipment relevant to a possible conflict with China has laid bare the flaws of the Pentagon’s current system of developing and purchasing new weapons.

For years basic items like artillery shells have been purchased in reduced quantities in favor of spending on more expensive – and more lucrative – big ticket items. But ramping up production, or replacing munitions expended during the wars in Ukraine and Middle East conflicts, is extremely difficult to do in short order because U.S. weapons are more costly and more complex than those produced by U.S. adversaries like Russia. Even the missile wars against the Houthi rebels in Yemen put the U.S. military-industrial complex at a disadvantage, as the U.S. shoots down cheap Houthi missiles with expensive U.S. interceptors.

There are two potential solutions to the death spiral. First, build simpler weapons that are good enough for the tasks at hand, but are also cheaper, more reliable, and easier to maintain and produce. This would run contrary to decades of Pentagon practice, where more technological “sophistication” is always viewed as a positive. It should be noted that the Pentagon’s “Replicator Initiative,” which is aimed at producing large numbers of cheap, capable systems in short order, is an attempt to address the death spiral issue, but the jury is out on whether this approach will succeed. And so far these new weapons – like swarms of mini-drones – are to be produced in addition to costly current generation systems, which is good news for arms makers but terrible news for taxpayers at a time when interest on the debt is now higher than the entire, enormous, Pentagon budget. We need to spend our money more wisely across the board, and the Pentagon is a good place to start.

The second way to address the death spiral is to rein in America’s runaway military strategy, which seeks the ability to fight and win wars virtually anywhere on earth while maintaining a huge global military footprint, as well as to arm multiple allies in shooting wars. We need a more hardheaded, restrained approach to when it is in the U.S. interest to use force, or to send weapons into battle zones. For example, arming Ukraine to defend itself against a Russian invasion makes sense, but since neither side is going to win total victory on the battlefield it is also urgently important to explore diplomatic options to end the conflict. In the Middle East, on the other hand, enabling Israel’s crimes in Gaza and its escalation to Lebanon and Iran is in no one’s interest, yet U.S. weapons keep flowing uninterrupted. That has to change.

There is a reckoning on the horizon regarding the goals and costs of the U.S. military apparatus. Unfortunately, the leaders of both parties remained mired in the past, like the proverbial generals fighting the last war. But this is no longer a theoretical debate. The lives and safety of millions of people here and around the world are at stake. We need to force Washington to catch up with reality, and soon, or we will all pay a horrific price in blood and treasure."

"FORBES"- Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough for the Pentagon?

ABOUT WILLIAM HARTUNG

I am a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.  I am the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the N

"THE DEBT BOMB" More Spending on Interest Than On National Defense

 

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" THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT - THE BUNKER" By Mark Thompson

"Spending like a drunken sailor threatens national security. For the first time in U.S. history: the nation spent more money buying nothing ($950 billion in interest) than it did on its military ($826 billion)."

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"There it was October 8, buried discreetly on page 5 (PDF) of yet another eye-glazer from the Congressional Budget Office. In 2023, the nation spent $776 billion on its military — which buys something — and $710 billion in net interest on the public debt — which buys nothing. But in fiscal 2024, which ended September 30, those numbers flipped.

The Bunker has been decrying waste, fraud, and abuse in the U.S. military for nearly a half-century. But everyone’s three favorite whipping boys when it comes to Pentagon spending pale alongside the nearly trillion dollars we spent on interest last year. That’s money we paid to borrowers, so we didn’t have to make the tough decisions required to live within our means.

We have simply opted to kick this annual binge-spending, now approaching $36 trillion, down a generation or two so our kids and grandkids can foot the bill. When The Bunker arrived in D.C. to cover the Pentagon in 1979, the national debt was $805 billion. That’s just over 2% of what it is today. OK, Boomers. Good job! According to CBO, interest paid on the national debt grew by a stunning 34% ($240 billion) from 2023 to 2024 (PDF). Those are numbers that would make an F-35 blush.

Congress approves all government spending, but more than half of the annual budget goes to mandatory programs like Social Security and Medicare locked (for now) into law. The rest — so-called discretionary spending, appropriated annually — is basically split between the Pentagon and everything else the federal government does (education, transportation, justice, the environment, etc.). But as that mandatory spending — and interest on the national debt — grows, there’s less left over for the Pentagon and all that other stuff. Both categories need deep cuts to avert financial disaster.

Neither presidential candidate is riding to the rescue. Vice President Harris’s economic proposals could add as much as $8 trillion to the national debt over the coming decade, according to an October 7 assessment by the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Former President Trump’s fiscal blueprints, the group projected, could add $15 trillion.

Such profligacy eventually will do more harm to U.S. national security than any foreign foe ever could." 

POGO - The Bunker: Debt Bomb

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.