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Should We Expect The Military Suicide Rate To Be Higher Then It Is? [split from]

Bruce Monkhouse

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This post from another thread is a different way of thinking and worthy of a whole different debate I thought.
Bruce


EDIT: If anyone has a better title for this then please let me know.


Chris Pook said:
Does this enter into the discussion at all?

A soldier is hired to perform the most anti-social act of all: to kill someone.

To make it worse, I think, in many cases he or she will hold no personal animosity to that person they have killed.  If they met them on Yonge Street killing them would not be their immediate response.

While in the forces, and particularly while actively engaged, everything they hear around them supports them as they perform the anti-social act while under orders.

Once they come away from the zone, however, the supports start being withdrawn and the soldier is left with their own thoughts.  As long as they stay in the army there is some buffer.  But the more interaction they have with others who have not shared their experience, perhaps, the more effort it takes to justify their actions to themselves.

Life may then become harder, if society decides that the original reason for the soldier being put in that position in the first place wasn't really that important after all.  Or worse, that it was wrong.

At that point the soldier is alone with their thoughts, isolated, if not ostracized from the community and trying to justify his behaviour, and the loss of friends to himself.

Perhaps the fact that there are so FEW suicides should be considered remarkable.
 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
If anyone has a better title for this then please let me know.

Suicide in the CAF?

Suicide in the CF (merged)
http://army.ca/forums/threads/47934.0/nowap.html
8 pages.

 
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