Is enough being done to stop/prevent suicide with Servicemembers and Veterans?

I have dealt with a few Soldiers who had these thoughts. What I did was devote as much of my time as humanly possible to help them. I took them to appts, ate chow with them, and showed them how much I cared. Not as an NCO, but as a person. Don't look at it as if a Soldier has the problem. They are a person just like all of us.

My answer is uncomfortable for the military, but I feel it is worthwhile as:

a) mandatory training and PowerPoint isn't reducing the total number of suicides
b) it seems so obvious and yet is never addressed

We need to stop treating Suicide as an individual problem. We enlist folks from all walks of life, every social and economic strata- so why is our suicide rate nearly double that of every other profession in the world? We have poured millions of dollars and hours into suicide prevention training, Master Resiliency Training, poster and leaflet propaganda... what do all these items have in common that is not being addressed?

The United States armed forces.

I am talking about command climate. I am talking about general officers casually ending the careers of Soldiers who have given their heart and soul for the armed forces for five or ten or fifteen years- officers who have never met the Soldier in question. I am talking about senior NCOs who no longer counsel and know their Soldiers, and who fail to express a genuine and staked interest in the emotional and social well-being of GI Joe, the Platoon Sergeants who go home at 1630 and seem inconvenienced by phone calls from their subordinates.

To avoid the perception of, "lets blame the other guy," I submit a simple test to validate my point. Pull up a diagram of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Now take every sub-bullet contained in the diagram and ask who has the most control over it: the individual troop, the E-5/O-1 level leadership, or the E-8/O-5 level of leadership? It is so stark and clear that there can be no other conclusion, and yet instead of addressing the problem we continue to give the individual "tools" to cope with the daunting amount of nonsense rolling down to the lowest level from on high.

This can be forwarded to DUI, Sexual Harassment, and every other area in which our individual Soldiers are being failed- it's time to address the fact that while we cannot pin these statistics on race, social strata, financial background, or MOS, there is a strong correlation between the frequency of these events and the perception of command climate. We don't need another program- we need better leaders who are accountable for their decisions to an independent counsel (be it civilian oversight or an office parallel to the IG).

As a soldier serving on active duty it isn't always the leaders who recognize that a soldier may be suicidal. My wife noticed I was having problems and feared that I may have been about to do something foolish. She approached my direct supervisor and unit commander about this. They both sat down with me privately and discussed what I felt needed to be done to help me get past the problem. They took my suggestions and made an appointment to see the unit Chaplain and a psychiatrist who I continued to see for 6 months until I felt that the danger had passed, after which I was informed that if I needed help in the future all I needed to do was to call and make a follow up appointment. Thank God for my wife and chain of command, otherwise I may not be here today. Leadership can be beneficial in keeping soldiers from committing suicide. But it may take someone who is closer to the individual on a daily basis to get the ball rolling.