Using MRT and Positive Psychology to Prevent Soldier Suicide

Introduction

The Army's Master Resilience Training (MRT) has been shown to be an effective tool for teaching military leaders how to incorporate positive psychology into their engagement with and interactions with their soldiers (Reivich, Seligman & McBride, 2011). Positive psychology is important because it offers leaders a way to help struggling soldiers who may be suffering from emotional or mental trauma that is pushing them toward self-harm. Suicide prevention is a real issue that many in the military must 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 possess something within themselves — some good potential — that they can tap into as an aid in overcoming challenges (Sheldon & King, 2001). This paper argues that Sergeants Major can use positive psychology and MRT specifically to overcome the leadership challenge of suicide within 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 down 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, 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 where before there was only despair (Vogt et al., 2017). Unless soldiers have a network of support or someone in their life who can help them address their struggles, they will surely sink.

When struggling with suicidal 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 the 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 make 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. These competencies allow the Sergeant Major to 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 into a terrible abyss from which they might otherwise never emerge. First, however, it starts with the Sergeant Major undergoing MRT to understand how to unlock his own potential.

Sergeants Major must 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 be of any real use to others. A leader who has not been trained in MRT may pose more of a risk than a help to a suicidal soldier: such a leader may not be aware of his own shortcomings, which a soldier in need is likely to immediately pick up on. This could cause the soldier to fall further, especially if he concludes that there is no hope when even his own Sergeant Major offers no help.

For that reason, MRT focuses on helping the Sergeant Major confront his own issues and shortcomings first, and then identify his strengths, so that he can ultimately connect with his soldiers in a meaningful way when they need help. As Griffith and West (2013) note, the first step is for the Sergeant Major 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 strengths and work on developing or controlling for his weaknesses. This is what it means to self-regulate: by controlling for those weaknesses and developing the ability to manage one's own emotions, the person is better positioned to help another manage theirs. For example, if a Sergeant Major finds that he loses patience when people begin talking about their emotions, he can recognize this as a weakness and engage in self-regulation by remaining alert to his triggers — either directing the conversation toward a more constructive ideal, such as a vision of hope and optimism, or finding a way to be more sympathetic to a soldier's emotional expression. Ultimately, the goal of self-regulation is to make the leader a firm and dependable source of support.

Optimism is equally important to cultivate, because it gives the Sergeant Major the ability to project hopefulness and to find the silver lining in difficult situations. For example, a leader may encounter a soldier who cannot think of a single reason to go on living. Unless that leader can genuinely project optimism and offer the soldier a credible reason for hope, he will not be of any real help. 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 to others so that they can see it too.

Mental agility, strength of character, and the ability to connect are the three remaining skills and tools that MRT teaches the Sergeant Major to use. The leader must be quick-thinking and able to avoid thinking traps — those moments when one jumps to conclusions or makes overgeneralizations that hurt more than they help. The leader should not rush to judgment but should be able to patiently hear the other person out, so that the soldier feels comfortable enough to begin trusting the leader (Reivich et al., 2011). This patience feeds into the leader displaying a strength of character that can then serve as a lifeline, bringing the struggling soldier out of himself and into the light of positive thoughts, feelings, and ways forward.

Conclusion

MRT is a valuable tool that Sergeants Major can use to help their soldiers navigate extremely stressful situations. Stress can lead a soldier to experience deep trauma that impairs his ability to function or to remain positive, and in severe cases that trauma may push him toward suicide. In these situations, the leader must draw on positive psychology to help the soldier identify a source of goodness he can hold onto as he works through his personal struggles. As research on positive emotions and the broaden-and-build theory demonstrates, cultivating positive emotional states is not merely a motivational exercise but a clinically meaningful intervention. MRT equips Sergeants Major with the competencies to deliver that intervention — and in doing so, it may save lives.

References

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218.

Griffith, J., & West, C. (2013). Master resilience training and its relationship to individual well-being and stress buffering among Army National Guard soldiers. The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 40(2), 140–155.

Kang, H. K., Bullman, T. A., Smolenski, D. J., Skopp, N. A., Gahm, G. A., & Reger, M. A. (2015). Suicide risk among 1.3 million veterans who were on active duty during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Annals of Epidemiology, 25(2), 96–100.

Reivich, K. J., Seligman, M. E., & McBride, S. (2011). Master resilience training in the US Army. American Psychologist, 66(1), 25.

Sheldon, K. M., & King, L. (2001). Why positive psychology is necessary. American Psychologist, 56(3), 216.

Vogt, D., Smith, B. N., Fox, A. B., Amoroso, T., Taverna, E., & Schnurr, P. P. (2017). Consequences of PTSD for the work and family quality of life of female and male US Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 52(3), 341–352.