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.

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.

How Stress Negatively Impacts Soldiers

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.

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.

How MRT Helps Leaders

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

A soldier thinking about suicide is demoralized and in need of genuine support. The leader must therefore be realistic when providing those reasons to live, starting small and personal. If the leader says something like, "Your division needs you — it wouldn't function without you," the soldier will likely see through it, because in that state he feels unneeded and easily replaceable. The leader has to show him why it is better to live on a personal level. In many cases, simply speaking about faith can help — acknowledging, for instance, that life was given with a purpose and that there is something worth living for. From that small kernel, the leader can begin talking about options: how the soldier could use his particular skills and traits for a meaningful purpose. This gets the soldier thinking about his own talents and strengths. The key is to keep the focus positive and to steer the soldier away from dwelling on and obsessing over every negative aspect of his life.

If the leader lacks MRT, he will lack the subtle, nuanced approach that the skill of connectivity requires (Griffith & West, 2013). A leader trained in military resilience will be able to spot trouble areas in advance — what are called "icebergs": small signals that protrude above the surface but indicate much larger problems below. These are typically deeply held beliefs that some leaders carry which are actually counter to good leadership — ideas like "It is my way or the highway" (Reivich et al., 2011). The leader needs to understand that a suicidal soldier is not interested in anyone's prescribed way. He is wondering why he shouldn't simply abandon the road altogether. The Sergeant Major who thinks a gruff exterior is all it takes to snap people into line is mistaken. Troubled soldiers need a firm source of support — one who is willing to listen, withhold judgment, and offer a ray of positive light and positive thinking.

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.

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