Dealing with Suicide in the Military

Suicide: Combating Suicide through the Positive Psychological Effects of Resilience
Introduction
The Army’s Master Resilience Training (MRT) has been shown to be an effective tool for teaching leaders in the military about how to incorporate positive psychology in their engagement of and interactions with their soldiers (Reivich, Seligman & McBride, 2011). Positive psychology is important because it offers leaders a way to help out struggling soldiers, who may be suffering from some emotional or mental trauma that is pushing them towards self-harm. Suicide prevention is a real issue that many in the military issue have to face—and the use of MRT is one way to face it effectively. Positive psychology works by focusing on the strengths and virtues of ordinary people and assumes that people have something within themselves—some good potential—that they can tap into to use as an aid in overcoming challenges (Sheldon & King, 2001). This paper will show how Sergeants Major can use positive psychology and MRT specifically to overcome leadership challenges of suicide in their units.
How Stress Negatively Impacts Soldiers
Soldiers have to be strong, mentally, physically and emotionally. Stress can wear them out, however, by draining their mental energy, depleting their emotional reserves, and running their bodies into the ground physically. If the stress is particularly traumatic, it can overtake their minds to such an extent that they feel out of control of their actions and unable to stem rising tides of anger or to fight off thoughts of suicide (Kang et al., 2015). A suicidal soldier is one who is on the brink—one who needs to be pulled back from the edge by a leader with the capacity to empathize and act in a positive manner so that the soldier feels hope whereas before there was just despair (Vogt et al., 2017). Unless soldiers have a network of support or someone in their life who can help them to address their struggles, they will surely sink.
When struggling with suicide ideation, soldiers need a strong source of support, someone who can lead them the way Virgil led Dante out of the Inferno. That support must come from a fellow human being who understands what they are going through and can provide the soldier with a reason to stay strong and a vision of hope that he soldier can use to climb out of the pit of despair. Soldiers who are so stressed that they think about suicide are ones who are in deep need of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2001). The development of positive emotions in a soldier’s life can be all the difference between a live soldier and a dead one.
How MRT Helps Leaders
MRT focuses on teaching the leader a range of competencies, including: 1) Self-awareness, 2) Self-regulation, 3) Optimism, 4) Mental Agility, 5) Strength of Character, and 6) Connection. The competencies allow the Sergeant Major to in turn use his own strengths to connect with his soldiers, bring them into his confidence, and provide them with the mental, social, emotional and even spiritual support they need to keep from sinking down into a terrible abyss from which they otherwise might never emerge. First, however, it starts with the Sergeant Major going through MRT to understand how to unlock his own potential.
Masters Sergeant have to learn to unlock their own emotions and examine patterns in their own attitudes and behaviors “that are counterproductive” (Reivich et al., 2011, p. 27) before they can actually be of any use to others. A leader who has not been trained in MRT may be more of a risk than a help for a suicidal soldier: the reason is that the leader may not be aware of his own shortcomings, which the soldier in need is likely to immediately pick up on, and which could cause the soldier to fall further especially if he thinks that there is no hope if even his own Master Sergeant is no help.
For that reason, MRT focuses on helping the Master Sergeant to confront his own issues and shortcomings first and then to identify his strengths so that, ultimately, he can connect with his soldiers in a meaningful way when they need help. As Griffith and West (2013) note, the first step is for the Master Sergeant to acquire self-awareness. Self-awareness is important because it allows the leader to see his own strengths and weaknesses. He can then tap into his own strengths and work on developing or controlling for his own weaknesses. This is what it means to self-regulate: by controlling for those weaknesses and developing one’s ability to control one’s own emotions, the person can be better situated to help another control theirs. For example, if a Master Sergeant finds that he loses patience with people when they start talking about their emotions, he can recognize this as a weakness and engage in self-regulation by being alert to one’s triggers and either directing the conversation towards a more wholesome ideal—such as the vision of hope and optimism—or else find a way to be more sympathetic to a person’s description of his emotions. At the end of the day, the idea is to self-regulate because this puts the leader in a position to be a firm source of support.
Optimism is important to cultivate, too, because it provides the Sergeant Major with the ability to project hopefulness and to see the silver lining in situations. For example, a leader may come across a soldier who cannot think of a single reason to go on living. Unless that leader can project optimism and actually have a good reason to give the soldier, he will not be any good to him. MRT teaches the Sergeant Major how to develop a sense of optimism, to find, see and hold true to the good in life and to project that ideal vision to others so that they can see it too.
Mental agility, strength of character and the ability to connect are the three other skills and tools that MRT teaches the Sergeant Master how to use. The leader has to be quick thinking and able to avoid thinking traps, which occur when one jumps to conclusions and makes over-generalizations that hurt more than they help. The leader should not be in a rush to judgment but should be able to patiently hear the other out so that the other feels comfortable enough to begin to trust the leader (Reivich et al., 2011). This feeds into the leader displaying a strength of character that can then be used as a rope to bring the struggling other out of himself and into the light of positive thoughts, feelings and ways forward.
How Leaders Can Use MRT to Help Soldiers Considering Suicide
The suicidal person is one who is out of happiness. Happiness is so important to people: it is like the fuel that keeps everyone moving forward. When one is unhappy, the whole world feels like a burden and the easiest or only way out at times can seem like the need to end it all. The Sergeant Major who has gone through MRT can help the soldier in this situation by, first of all, showing the soldier that there are a lot of reasons to live.
A soldier thinking about suicide is one who is demoralized and in need of support. The leader must therefore be realistic when providing those reasons to live. He has to start off small and personal. If he says something like, “Your division needs you—it wouldn’t be able to function without you,” he will see through that because in that state he is feeling unneeded and easily replaceable. The leader has to show him why it is better to live on a personal level. In many cases, simply talking about God can help and mentioning how God wants you to live because He gave you life and He wants you to use it for a good purpose. From that small little kernel, the leader can start talking about options—how the soldier could use his skills or traits that he has been given for a good purpose. This gets the soldier thinking about his own talents and his own strengths. The idea is to keep it positive and to get the soldier away from emphasizing and obsessing over all the negative things in his life.
If the leader lacks MRT, he will lack the subtle nuanced approach that this skill of connectivity requires (Griffith & West, 2013). The leader who has received MRT will be able to spot trouble areas ahead—what are called icebergs (little signals that protrude a bit above the surface but that indicate big problems below). These are typically deeply held beliefs that leaders often possess that are actually counter to what being a good leader is all about—ideas like, “It is my way or the highway” (Reivich et al., 2011). The leader needs to realize that a suicidal soldier is not going to be interested in anyone’s way. He wants to know why he doesn’t just jump off the highway all together and disappear forever. The Sergeant Major who thinks a gruff exterior is all it takes to snap people into line is mistaken. Troubled sergeants need a firm source of support—one who is willing to listen, not judge and offer a ray of positive light and positive thinking.
Conclusion
MRT is a great tool that Sergeants Major can use to help their soldiers through extremely stressful situations. Stress can really lead a soldier to experience deep down trauma that impacts the soldier’s ability to function or to stay positive. The soldier may even become suicidal. In these situations, the leader has to use positive psychology to help the soldier find a source of goodness that he can make his own and hold onto while he overcomes his personal issues.

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