Hyperaware

Last week, CBS News did a story on the fact that the President of the United States did not write condolence letters to families of military service personnel who committed suicide in war.  This week, the White House has changed the policy.  Instead of only sending the letters to families who lost loved ones in accidents or in battle, the White House will now be sending some kind of recognition, though not an official condolence letter, to families of people who committed suicide while in wars.  The new policy will not change to include stateside training deaths, though.

Even though people may see these as form letters or something that isn’t really worth anything, it might mean the world to a suicide victim’s family.  These families are left behind with no answers to why they have suffered such a loss.  A letter that expresses some form of respect for the pain that they have been going through is not anything that people should feel is inappropriate.  It should be something that people view as a simple show of respect, not as something demeaning to others or dumb in nature.

One would think that people would see this as a good thing, since the President will now acknowledge the loss that these families have endured.  Though many do realize that this is a wonderful change in policy, others remain ignorant about this. The comments from these people say that this kind of recognition of suicide is demeaning to those who die in a battle during a war waged by this country.  I understand suicide is a controversial thing, but is it too much to ask that people actually respect those who have ended their lives or their families.

I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised, but seeing the way that people seem to treat suicide is just very disturbing. Some people may think that suicide is immoral because of their religious beliefs. I know that Catholicism it is often considered to be sinful to take one’s life.  However, even the Catholic Church has become more open-minded about what leads a person to end their life.  In fact, the Church has even understood that grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or some grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the person’s responsibility with regards to the suicide.  Some followers of the religion may not be so forgiving to these people, though.

It seems like people should understand that suicide is not something that most people do simply because they are cowards or because they are weak.  Suicide is not a sign of a deficiency in a person.  It is the result of the strain that the psyche can put on a person. Ninety percent of people who commit suicide have some form of mental illness at the time of their death.  The most common mental illness of a person who commits suicide is depression, though others including Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, aka PTSD.  People who have survived a traumatic event are more likely to commit suicide than people who have not been victims of trauma.  People who have been injured or put in the hospital more than once during war have a higher rate of suicide than other military personnel.  The risk also increases among people who have PTSD, but do not learn to cope with it properly and do not express their feelings with others.  According to the Veterans Administration, “the strongest link to both suicide attempts and thinking about suicide is guilt related to combat. Many Veterans have very disturbing thoughts and extreme guilt about actions taken during times of war. These thoughts can often overwhelm the Veteran and make it hard for him or her to deal with the intense feelings.”

It is not fair to think that the government should look at people who are physically harmed in battle with more respect than those who carry the mental scars.  By seeing their friends get killed or injured during war, a person becomes more likely to take their own life.  The same is true about what happens for some after they have had to kill or injure others during war.  There are also men and women who are traumatized sexually during war.  Trauma from rape is a well-known cause of suicide in the mental health field.  Studies done by the government into the amount of stress that military members are under has shown that many members of the military are under intense stress from combat.  These studies also show that those under this intense stress have more mental illnesses than others who have less stress.

Military personnel who served in Iraq have been found to be more traumatized than those who have only served in Afghanistan.  The location of deployment isn’t the only cause of increase in mental health issues.  Other things, including deployment time, more severe combat exposure, traumatic brain injury, lower rank, lower education level, morale of their unit, being unmarried, family problems, and prior traumatic life events, can increase the likelihood of mental health problems of someone in combat.  Even though a million troops have served in battle, less than half have gone through psychotherapy or sought other mental health care.  Many who don’t seek help choose to go without help because they were concerned over appearing weak or being treated differently.  Because of the stigma that is attached to mental health care, people have gone untreated, which has led to more suicides.

It is unfortunate that the fears over stigma have been proven to be true by these Facebook comments.  It seems like people could show some respect for people who have been so harshly impacted by the horrors of war that they saw no better alternative than to end their life.  I know that it might seem weird to expect people to show respect to the families of the members of the military who have ended their lives.  It might also be weird to want them to show respect to the deceased.  But it doesn’t feel right to only respect certain types of death.

A family that has lost someone from suicide is just as devastated and have lost just as much as those who have lost their relatives from a road side bond or from friendly fire.  Their death is just as real.  It is just as painful.  It is just as significant.  To ignore the loss would be like saying that the pain that led to this kind of sad act is not important or worthy of interest or sympathy from the top officials in the country.  To ignore it would mean that the nation is unwilling to accept that there is a cost from this war that the country has never acknowledged in the past.  Suicides are true casualties of war.  Even if it isn’t from someone else shooting them or causing them some kind of physically violent death, suicide is still a consequence from war.

If a person died in war from an injury to their nervous system, then these people would view it as a heroic death.  Oddly, the nervous system includes neurotransmitters, which are often a key part of psychological disorders.  If people see a death as being the result of a neurological problem, then they respect it.  When they see it as being purely mental, it becomes something to mock them over.  That kind of ignorance seems completely unfathomable.  I hope that one day people will respect suicide victims for what they are: people who have died from a physical condition that can be destructive to a person’s thought processes.