CAMP JOSEPH T. ROBINSON, Ark., - Two uniformed Arkansas National Guard Soldiers visit homeless shelters and food pantries in a Little Rock neighborhood, joined by a dozen police officers.
Someone has called to report concern about a servicemember’s welfare. Neither the Guard nor police nor other civilian agencies have been able to track down the troop, and it has come down to house-by-house inquiries in an area where a cell phone provider has reported the servicemember last used his phone.
“The Arkansas National Guard cares about every Soldier and every Airman and – our adjutant general has said – every servicemember that is in our state boundaries … and they served their country, we care enough to drop everything and help them,” said Army Capt. Tanya Phillips, suicide prevention program manager.
Arkansas is one of many National Guard states – others include California, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Puerto Rico, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin – that have gone above and beyond in responding to a spike in military suicides. Arkansas had one such death in 2008, seven in 2009.
What Arkansas has done in the last 14 months makes for a case study in response.
All of Arkansas’ efforts are aimed at building resiliency – giving Guardmembers a deep foundation to endure stress.
“I see a lot of people that place things as gods in their lives,” Arkansas Chaplain (Army Capt.) Jeremy Miller said. “When that god … is removed – a person, a place, a substance or an experience – then they’re going, ‘I have no reason to live.’ It’s placing all of their stock in these one or two things.”
The National Guard Bureau is adding directors of psychological health in every state and territory and the District of Columbia. Ronnie Goff, the Arkansas National Guard’s director of psychological health, said resiliency needs to be built early and reinforced often.
“Troops need, during their Basic Combat Training, concrete methods that they can use – whether they are deployed or in their civilian life – to maintain better mood,” he said.
Goff is talking about “mood” in the clinical sense, where lowered mood is an indicator of higher risk for mental health issues such as depression.
“Lower their risk by increasing their knowledge of how to maintain your mental health under stress,” he said.
He emphasizes exercise, because it stimulates endorphins; socialization; and positive thinking.
“Exercise is not just for your physical fitness,” Goff said. “It’s hugely important to maintaining mental health.”
It is important not to isolate, Goff said. “We need others around us. You don’t even have to discuss your problems – just socializing is enough.”
Finally, Goff emphasizes taking control of how we think – especially during down time off the job or falling asleep at night.
“We definitely have a choice about what we are going to think about, what we are going to dwell on,” he said. “Think about positive people or situations or events.”
Taken together, exercise, socialization and positive thinking can go a long way to increasing resiliency, he said. “It works for just about any sort of difficulty that’s putting mental health at risk.”
Resiliency is a relatively new field that has gained traction in the last couple of years, he said.
“These programs are very young and still in the development stage,” Goff said. “It’s a huge step forward, but the results are not going to be realized right away.”
But leaders throughout the Guard have no doubt resiliency needs to become second nature. “When our children are very young, we teach them tornado drills,” Phillips told the audience at a February statewide call-to-action hosted by the Arkansas Guard. “Three people died last year in Arkansas due to tornadoes; 400 were lost to suicide.”
Resiliency should be as important as any other public health initiative, she said.
In the meantime, tracking the 2009 spike in suicides, the Arkansas Guard took a series of initiatives that have gone beyond helping troops to help the entire state.
The governor and Army Maj. Gen. William Wofford, the adjutant general, launched a statewide appeal in September to ask Arkansas families, communities and businesses to watch out for servicemembers who might be facing difficulty. Offers of help from external organizations poured in. The Arkansas Guard conducted a suicide stand-down.
Actor Judge Rheinhold, whose wife is from Little Rock, where the couple maintains a home, made two public service announcements that run on television daily.
The Arkansas National Guard teamed up with the governor, attorney general and state director of behavioral health to develop a state suicide prevention program for all Arkansas residents.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, the Arkansas Guard modeled efforts on a national plan, studied what other Guard states had done and got local input to make their plan best fit their state’s unique needs.
The network includes civilians, public and private sector agencies and treatment providers, foundations and suicide survivors. In February, the Arkansas National Guard hosted an Arkansas Suicide Prevention Network call-to-action attended by more than 140 professionals from more than 40 agencies.
The Guard reached a unique memorandum of understanding with Veterans Affairs that greatly enhanced the Guard’s abilities to get help for troops.
“It has been an outstanding tool,” Phillips said. “They are bending over backwards. They will do anything to help our Soldiers and Airmen.”
When the adjutant general held his annual leadership conference earlier this month, he devoted one of the three days to suicide prevention.
The state’s “Stressed Out” program combines activities such as a walk, giveaways such as stress balls and T-shirts and a Facebook site replete with job announcements, relationship resources and humor to get the message out.
“We’ve done many interventions through the Facebook site,” Phillips said.
The Guard joined forces with numerous organizations, including Give An Hour, whose network of mental health care providers has donated more than $2.4 million in counseling for servicemembers nationwide since 2007.
Soldiers and Airmen receive suicide prevention training and are encouraged to watch out for their battle buddies.
Miller has found himself hosting area training for churches throughout the state. “Once a month, I will get a call from a civilian pastor that will say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’” he said adding that the Arkansas Guard’s experience can help.
A suicide prevention task force spearheaded by Phillips, Miller and Goff stands ready to intervene on a moment’s notice, 24/7, 365-days-a-year to help troubled servicemembers.
Some servicemembers prefer a chaplain’s religious background, Miller said. Others like Goff’s psychological background or Phillips’ tell-it-like-it-is advice.
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” he said. “Don’t let them go until you know they’re in someone’s care.”
In extreme cases, the Guard reaches out to emergency dispatchers, cell phone companies and computer service providers to find troubled servicemembers.
So when the Arkansas Guard got a phone call alerting them that someone who might be a civilian or military member of a service component in the state was having a mental health crisis, the suicide prevention task force swung into action.
“We did not know if that person was a civilian, or whether it was military personnel,” Phillips said. “If it was Army, Air Force, Marine, Navy. All we knew is that there was a life in jeopardy.”
Officials contacted all components and searched Guard databases.
“It turned out to be one of our own,” Phillips said. “The addresses that we had in the system for him didn’t work. The phone numbers didn’t work.”
The Guard contacted law enforcement dispatchers, national help hotlines, online providers and cell phone companies.
“We never want to violate anybody’s privacy,” Phillips said. But they will do whatever it takes to help. “We became very, very concerned,” she said. “Everybody pulled out every stop trying to locate this Soldier.”
In the end, using cell phone global positioning information, authorities narrowed down where they thought the servicemember might be – and Guard officers joined police on foot for a neighborhood search.
Police located the Soldier and he was admitted to a Veterans Affairs hospital.
“It worked,” Phillips said. “We were thrilled. … All of these outside agencies have really bonded together, not just for the military, but for the state.
“There are lots of resources. Hundreds of resources – whether they’re military or civilian, there are so many people out there that can help and are willing to help, and they’ll bend over backwards to help. We just have to match the person in need with the right resource.”