PTSD: Guide to Suicide

[faulty_damper]

This is a how-to guide to suicide if you or someone you know is in the military.

1. Serve in an active war zone.
2. Experience high amounts of life-threatening stress with fellow soldiers.
3. Return home, parting ways with fellow soldiers.
4. Social isolation from fellow soldiers causes depression.
5. Stick rifle in mouth.
6. Pull trigger.
7. If successful, you shouldn't be able to read this.  Congratulations!


The above is a possible explanation for the high rates of post active-service suicide.  When placed under stress, comrades are your social support system.  They experience the same things you experience and can relate to the fears of war.  However, when active service has ended and you return home, you are going home alone without your comrades, the only people who can truly understand your experiences.  This isolation leads to depression, better known as PTSD.  This depression can lead to suicide.  Currently, more than one war veteran per day commits suicide in the US military.

In contrast, people who live in war zones rarely commit suicide.  These are the people who have their families blown to shreds, their arms and legs shot off or otherwise maimed.  Yet, the rates of suicide in Syria, for example, is 1 in a million compared to 11 to 100,000 in the US.¹  In fact, in war torn countries, suicide is rare.  Considering that they experience such horrific violence on a daily basis, far worse than any military soldier, they don't kill themselves.

WARNING: Graphic content
https://www.bestgore.com/murder/several-syrian-doused-with-gasoline-burnt-fsa/

Why don't they commit suicide at higher rates?  It could be that they don't need to since they think they'll be murdered anyway but the real reason is because they have a strong social support system.  A boy's parents are killed in a bomb blast.  That's sad, but now you'll be closer friends with the other boy's who've also had their parents killed.  This social support system prevents the isolation that can come from such tragic events.

But back to war vets, when war veterans return home, they leave behind their fellow soldiers.  They become socially isolated even when surrounded by family and friends back home.  These people cannot fathom the kinds of life-threatening stress this soldier experienced and can't possible understand him.  Without this support, depression crashes hard and it leads to PTSD and ultimately suicide.

¹https://chartsbin.com/view/prm

[faulty_damper]

I wanted to share my thoughts on this because the current practice counseling does not work.  Even identifying those with PTSD is difficult.  Nor has the military done anything about this suicide epidemic.

If you have family or friends who have been to war and they appear out of it, sending them to counseling isn't the best option.  The best option is to get in touch with the people from his squad.  Get them together before it is too late.