Suicides in the Military

A Christian Army chaplain was recently punished for quoting the Bible during a suicide prevention training session.  There are two things that bother me about this.

First, if one does not want a chaplain to use supporting documentation from their faith then they should not ask a chaplain at all.  It is ridiculous that something so obvious even has to be spelled out.  If someone asks a psychiatrist to teach a suicide prevention training session, we should expect some psychiatric anecdotes to support their position.  They would, after all, be a psychiatrist.  Nor should anyone be surprised or offended if a Muslim chaplain quoted the Koran or a Jewish chaplain quoted the Torah during such a training session.  There is nothing illegal about a chaplain talking about their faith, especially during an applicable topic like suicide, which brings me to my second point.

Suicide needs to be taken seriously.  I will say that again because I am not convinced that we do.  Suicide needs to be taken seriously.  The military is still losing an average of one member every 18 hours to suicide.  The military leadership that punished that chaplain needs to redirect their focus on that statistic.  It does not help that the civilian sector takes suicide no more serious.  Rather, there is now a rise of suicide glorification in our culture, even referring to such acts as “dignified.”  This is nonsense.  This is irresponsible.  This is dangerous and its needs to be addressed.  We need leadership in the military and in the civilian sector to raise awareness on this epidemic.