--- title: How Can Families and Communities Help Prevent Suicide? | TIME description: Command Post Suicide #4 h264 canonical: https://time.com/video/e7fOm3IW/ og:title: How Can Families and Communities Help Prevent Suicide? og:description: Command Post Suicide #4 h264 og:url: https://time.com/video/e7fOm3IW/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/e7fOm3IW/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Can Families and Communities Help Prevent Suicide? twitter:description: Command Post Suicide #4 h264 twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/e7fOm3IW/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # How Can Families and Communities Help Prevent Suicide? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: How Can Families and Communities Help Prevent Suicide? [Watch (HLS stream): How Can Families and Communities Help Prevent Suicide?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/e7fOm3IW.m3u8) (6:01)  _Published 2011-11-23. Command Post Suicide #4 h264_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:19 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) ["Mental healthcare should be treated the same as physical healthcare," says this suicide prevention expert](/video/7Kps35rn/) ### "Mental healthcare should be treated the same as physical healthcare," says this suicide prevention expert [Military Suicides and the Stigma of Therapy](/video/1JiYVaD8/) ### Military Suicides and the Stigma of Therapy [PostSecret Suicide: Please Don't Jump\!](/video/5W0Xp6Md/) ### PostSecret Suicide: Please Don't Jump! --- ## Transcript This is Command Post, a series of discussions about military matters from Time and the Center for a New American Security. Dr. Rich, we've been talking about the decisions soldiers make, individual service members make. But this is really a broader problem than that. What, what can families do, and what can communities do to try to get a handle on this problem? Well, I'll say families and providers and communities. One of the things that families can do can educate themselves. There's a ton of educational material out there on the web. And I often hear families complain that they don't know enough but there's really been a lot of very good resources provided. Providers need to ask everybody, are you a veteran? Or have you been in the armed forces? And also, about head injury. Have you been exposed to something that could have caused a traumatic brain injury or a concussion? And, of course, ask about post traumatic stress disorder. But if somebody's been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa. I would make the assumption that they've been exposed to traumatic stress. And then what can the community do? All kinds of things. First of all, see what is in your community and where the gaps are, and then if you need to move in programs do that. Is this a state problem or is it a national problem? I think it's a national problem, but the solutions have to be local. Service members, whether they're soldiers or airmen or marines, they come back to communities, they don't come back to the national government. And so the local communities and resources in the local communities have to address this issue. Especially in the rural population. And that's where it's often very difficult. I was at a conference about a month ago in Oregon and they were really looking at how can we provide services to our rural vets, who won't come three, four, six hours to Portland where the VA is. I think you have to look at it locally because people want to get services and treatments and stay in the community. And don't forget jobs. Jobs are so important. The ultimate localness is the family. What are the three or four things family members should be aware of and be looking out for as potentially leading indicators that somebody might be doing harm to his or herself? There's the signs and symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. And to remind you, those are repeat intrustive thoughts or flashbacks, numbness or disassociation, and hyper- vigilance, in other words feeling jumpy and looking to see if that's a bomb at the side of the road. The other things that are really important is sleep problems, can be a risk factor. Often people are angry. That's not one of the symptoms of PTSD, in the past, but we're seeing a lot of irritibility, a lot of anger. If the soldier feels that they couldn't do what they could do before. Before, they could take a rock and march up the hill. They were a real man, a real woman, and now if they just can't run with their unit, that's worrisome. And that needs to be talked about with the service member. And that's a problem that almost every veteran is going to have. As a result of, of just the exigencies of service, and then the normal aging process, and the combination of the two I think is something we're going to have to look out for. Yes, and, and four years are very proud. They want to be seen as tough and strong, and by and large they are tough and strong. They don't want to admit to any weakness. They don't want to have other people see that weakness. So, you gotta be able to share with your spouse or your son, your father, you know, it's okay if you're hurt, we can take of that, we can work through it together. The reality, is though, that families evolved while the service member was deployed. Time didn't freeze just because he or she was on deployment, and so it's difficult having the service member reintegrate back into the family and back into the community. And in many of these instances, this service member has come home different and families are having to accustom themselves to what a new normal is. That's a difficult situation for anyone in that family to experience. And, and from my own experience, you can come back from a combat zone and almost immediately have to move your family somewhere else. Move away from, both the family support networks that they've built during deployment, and the unit support networks, and, and, and immediately set up somewhere else half way across the country. Half way across the world, and so I wonder if, if there is more the military can do to lengthen the time period after a deployment where a unit stays together and a family stays part of that, that, that sort of support network. John, they've been looking at those policies, and its complicated because they do want to both increase the dwell time, the time back home, but if you do that then that has a downstream effect on everybody. The marines have established a 90 day cohesion period after deployment. Where, absent a general officer's approval, they leave people in that unit. The army hasn't yet found a way to do that because of all the reasons that, that you just mentioned. When I talk to unit commanders, they often say that it's, it's 10 % of their people that they spend 90 % of. 90 % of the problems. The commander's time on. Yep. Right. What happens when you come back from these deployments is your good soldiers may also be having problems, and as a commander you recognize that that individual is usually in your 90 %. And hopefully as the, the demands of, of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan start to taper off, the Army will have more flexibility to, to do some of these kind of things. We have improved somewhat. You remember that Korea and Vietnam, people went over as individual deployers for a year and came back, which was really detrimental to unit. It had to be horribly lonely coming back alone. Yes. And now at least, the unit goes as a unit, and then in most cases comes back as a unit, again, with the reserve and guard, it's hardest, because they come back, and after they get back, they're de- mobbed, and often go back to a community that doesn't know them. [ MUSIC ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How Can Families and Communities Help Prevent Suicide?","description":"Command Post Suicide #4 h264","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/e7fOm3IW/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2011-11-23T14:15:23.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/e7fOm3IW.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/e7fOm3IW/","duration":"PT6M1S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/e7fOm3IW/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```