Essay3 rough draft
Suicide is one of the most talked about issues in the military but rates are not seeing improvement amongst it’s active-duty members and veterans. Being a veteran, this topic is near and dear to my heart, I have known people who have committed suicide. One was a senior leader and although he wasn’t in the same platoon that I was, he was a well-known and respected marine throughout the company. He lived in the barracks and whenever I would see he would have a smile on his face and he was great leader and mentor to others. After getting the news that he passed away I was shocked and thought that you never know what people are going trough in their mind and the things they are holding in, depression wears a mask. Not to long after getting out I had gotten the news that one the junior marines that was in my platoon while I was in committed suicide; I felt that one a little bit more because this is someone who I have trained and spent time with in the field. What if I could have done something different to help that marine to where he didn’t feel the need to end his life. I have served with people who know even more people than I do that have committed suicide some even in the double digits. With how much the topic is talked why is it that we see an increase in suicide rates amongst veterans; what are the factors and what could the military be doing better to prevent suicide?
In 2019 the suicide rate amongst Active-Duty troops was 25.9 per100,000, according to the Pentagon’s annual report, it was 24.9 per 100,000 in 2018 and 21.9 per 100,000 in 2017(Brooks). The Army has seen a 30% increase in deaths by suicide from 2019 to 2020 with 88 deaths in 2019 and 114 deaths by suicide in 2020(Brooks). According to the report released by the Department of Veteran Affairs officials 17.6 veterans committed suicide everyday in 2018 and 17.5 in 2017(Shane). In his article in Military Times Leo Shane states the VA officials have clarified that the “20 a day” reference that we see when talking about veterans’ suicide also includes active-duty troops as well as guardsmen (members of the coast guard) and also reservists. The difference between a veteran and active-duty member is, that a veteran is someone who has completed his contract and is separated from service under honorable condition; and active-duty member is some who is currently serving in the armed forces. According to the report released by the Department of Defense released in 2020 498 active duty died by suicide in 2019, 543 in 2018 and 517 in 2017 (Games). “According to the 2020 Executive Order number 13861, more veterans, Guardsmen, active-duty members, and reservists die by suicide every year than those killed in action while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 combined (Games)”.
Studies show the factors associated with increased risk of suicide are depression, manic-depressive disorder, heavy or binge drinking and other alcohol-related problem; none of the deployment-related factors such as combat experience, cumulative days deployed, or number of deployments were associated with increased suicide risk (LeardMann). Another huge factor is the transition from being a service member to going back into the civilian world. From day one the military builds a culture of camaraderie and brotherhood throughout your whole enlistment, teaching you to lean on and support each other through all the trials and tribulations that come your way. The thing is when you don’t want to re-enlist, they just basically say give us our stuff back and go deal with on your own usually to go back to a home town that has forgotten you and back to “friends” who don’t compare to the brothers you just were with. A lot of its hard for veterans to find happiness and something to look forward to; for the infantry especially it’s hard to transfer the skills you learned in the military into something useful in the “real world” (I know this from first hand experience). Outside of law enforcement the infantry other no transferable skills and some veterans find it extremely hard to find that sense of belonging and lose their self-worth.
There are efforts being made to raise awareness and help suicide prevention in the military like with the passage of the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act a legislation “which includes new grant program to encourage collaboration with community organizations on suicide prevention, new hiring rules to quickly fill mental health staffing gaps at the Department of Veteran Affairs, and a host of new data requirements to better track potential causes of suicide (Shane2)”. Over the last decade the VA suicide prevention and mental health care funding has increased $6 billion, hiring staff all aimed at providing greater access to care (Boozman). The military also gives members yearly suicide awareness classes; all of this looks good on paper but service member still feel that mental health is still over looked by higher ups in the chain of command.
I’ve talked to fellow service members and got their input on what the military is doing wrong. Tony Guzman felt that “senior leaders on both the enlisted and commissioned officer side should stopped caring about just their careers and actually listened to the gripes and complaints that the lower are telling them about. A lot of people are scared to say anything because they will be ostracized and looked at as if they were cowards.” Also, another area that service members feel that need improvement on is the importance of family; there is only one family readiness coordinator per battalion. Let me put that in perspective, a battalion consist of about 1,000 service members, that’s means its up to only one person to keep the members of 1,000 families informed of upcoming training events, deployments, updates on what their loved ones are doing while on deployment when they are coming back, all this and more. The easiest ways to do the is just to write one email and send it out through a data base full of emails. We also talked about how each battalion should have a team of physical, mental, nutritional, and occupational therapists available to Service members 24/7. Navy Corpsman Nathan Cole told me he feels “mental health is just as important as a torn ACL or any other physical injury. The Marines need to find a way to implement a system that allows for mental health to be treated correctly and effectively without repercussions from the chain of command and disqualifications for special duty assignments and deployments.” I also talked with Sgt Kolakowski, a former platoon sergeant of mine who suffers from PSTD, anxiety, and depression and he told me that the last year and half that he was active-duty he had a mental breakdown and he was “constantly berated by my Xo and Gunny for being weak and un able to perform my duties.” He told me that even after a suicide attempt and being picked up by police and put on a mental evaluation hold by his chain of command only a few people should him any kind of sympathy. The good news is there are people out there who are trying help but its not enough. How many people have to end their lives for the military finally stary away from the complex mind set that if you seek help for anything mentally or physically you are seen as weak and coward.
Work Cited
Brook, Tom Vanden. “Suicide rate among active-duty troops jumps to six-year high, COVID-19 stress could make it even worse.” USA Today. 1 October, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/01/suicide-rate-among-active-duty-troops-jumps-six-year-high/5879477002/
Boozman, John and Warner, Mark. “Mental health and suicide crisis among US veterans getting new approach.” MilitaryTimes. 9 November, 2020 https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/11/09/mental-health-and-suicide-crisis-among-us-veterans-getting-new-approach/
Cole, Nathan. USN/Corpsman. Personal interview. 14 April, 2021
Games, Katrina and Theargood, Aliyah. “Service member suicide prevention: Why the military must end the stigma on mental health.” MilitaryTimes. 31 October, 2020 https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/10/31/service-member-suicide-prevention-why-the-military-must-end-the-stigma-on-mental-health/
Guzman, Tony. USMC/Cpl/Retired. Personal interview. 14 April, 2021
Kolakowski, Christopher. USMC/SGT/Retired. Personal Interview. 14 April, 2021
LeardMann, Cynthia; et al. “Risk Factors Associated with Suicide in Current and Former US Military Personnel.” JamaNetwork. 7 August, 2013. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1724276
Shane, Leo. “Suicide rate among veterans up again slightly, despite focus on prevention efforts.” MilitaryTimes. 12 November, 2020. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/11/12/suicide-rate-among-veterans-up-again-slightly-despite-focus-on-prevention-efforts/
Shane, Leo. “Huge slate of veteran suicide prevention measures set for debate next month.” MilitaryTimes. 25 August, 2020. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/08/25/huge-slate-of-veteran-suicide-prevention-measures-set-for-debate-next-month/
First I would like to say Thank You for your services and condolences to you and the family of the individuals you served with. The essay did have a very clear thesis about suicide in the military and also, among our veterans also which is very problematic in today’s time. With having a clear thesis I already had the idea of what I would be reading as I start. Your first paragraph drew me instantly in with the life experience that you went through while serving. There was also a really good amount of evidence with the statics of suicide within the military with individuals and what contributing factor also could lead to suicide not just being the military alone as the factor. The paragraph focusing on one point was also present in the essay. I was wondering with the opposing view is there anyone that disagrees with the rates of suicide within the military as to someone saying there have been any improvements within the rates or with actual progress with prevention of suicide with addressing the factors so don’t lead to these outcomes? It appears that the in-citation in MLA format is present in the essay( I’m still learning the MLA formats myself) although it does look to all be in place from what I’m reading. I do have to say this is a well-written rough draft.
Nice job overall! I’m impressed by the depth of research–those interviews are esp. effective. Paras. are well-focused, and good citation/research skills demonstrated (with a few quibbles below).
I know we talked about how to make this a bit more argumentative. It seems to me it’s basically there, just could use a little tweaking. It seems to me this is basically a causal argument (rather than a proposal for how things could be made better)–answering the question why have suicide rates continued to rise. So I’d say you could have a thesis that looks something like this: “Despite the efforts made to reverse the trend , suicide rates both of active-duty military and veterans have continued to rise for the simple reason that the military culture does not adequately address the mental health needs of its member.” Or something like that… Or you could specifically highlight the issues for veterans (I think you make more clear that the majority of these suicides are veterans–maybe could get a little more info about difficulties of finding a job, adjusting, etc.)
A few citation issues (mostly it’s very well done). In Works cited words in article titles should be capped, except for articles, prepositions, and conjunctions (that’s most words except for a, an, the, on, over, and, or, etc.) Those words are capped if they’re the first word in title btw. If you have more than one author, only the first author has first name and last name switched, so it’s Green, Joe and Emily White (for example). In in-text citation, the citation comes after the close quote, if it’s a quote, and before the period. For the two Shane articles, you did a good job to recognize that you needed to distinguish between the two for in-text citations, but (Shane2) is not how MLA does that (we didn’t discuss this, I don’t think, since it occurs so infrequently). The way MLA handles is is to use the title as well as the last name–and here you can use a shortened version of the title, as long as reader can tell which source you mean. So you might use (Shane, “Suicide Rate among Veterans”) for the first one, for example.
Some smaller issues:
–In para. 2 I’d suggest starting with a more general topic sentence, rather than leaping into stats immediately. And I think you’re using more stats than you need here–it gets confusing, esp. when some are no. per 100,000 and others are percents–hard to compare. I don’t think it’s necessary to define active service vs vets.
–In para. 3, can you get a little more directly at why suicides are *increasing*–that is, are rates of depression, alcohol abuse, etc. also increasing?
–In para. 4, curious about when that act passed. So can we tell if it’s had any effect? Is that basically the only thing that’s been done, or other policy changes, etc?
–I’d suggest breaking that last long para. so you have a para. with your interviews and then a concluding para. (that might offer a few suggestions, or describe what your vision would be of a more mental-healthy supportive military–or is a big part of the problem assistance with that transition phase,so could involve community support, or raising awareness of employers, for example.