Content warning: this story includes a discussion of the topic of suicide.
This season of Veterans’ Voices explores the stories of individuals affected by and working to prevent veteran suicide. For this week's installment, lead producer Seth Gordon spoke with two experts in the field who work for the United States Department for Veterans Affairs, or the VA.
Tara Consolino is the suicide prevention program manager for the VA healthcare system serving Ohio, Indiana and Michigan and Jay Wainscott is the program manager for suicide prevention at the Dayton VA Medical Center.
The following transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Seth Gordon: What is the VA's understanding of why more veterans than the civilian population are dying by suicide?
Tara Consolino: There's several factors that feed into the risk factors that are seen within our veterans. Familiarity with firearms, and let's face it, firearms are lethal, I think over 90% of the time when they're utilized.
There's psychosocial stressors that, sadly, are sometimes the foundation for why individuals seek to go into the services. If those psychosocial stressors are not addressed, they can be compounded upon, if you're found in a combat zone or in theater. Insomnia, mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, PTSD.
And oftentimes, when we look at boot camp alone, it's that whole suck it up, buttercup mentality. You are boots on the ground. You go in, they break you down to build you back up. But what happens when you are trained for one foot in front of the other? Again, suck it up, soldier, get through it.
Too often I think that they apply that, our veterans and our active duty think, I have to handle this on my own. And the fact of the matter is, this is so much larger than an individual issue.
This comes back down to each of us saying, listen, we cannot isolate. We've got to be there for each other, whether it's our active duty, our veterans, our service members or our families, to be able to make sure that they know who to reach out to, that they can reach out, and again, I cannot hit this mark enough, that treatment actually works. I think too often people think, well, it might work for you, but not me. I'm too intense. And the fact is, treatment does work.
It is okay to directly ask people: Are you having thoughts of dying by suicide? Once you ask that question, you give permission for people to be honest.Tara Consolino
Jay Wainscott: When we think about a person that gets out of the military, they've lost that role. They are no longer that person. They no longer have that, put the next foot in front of the other. There's nobody there to tell them. Oftentimes what I see is that loss of value.
They feel like they don't have value when they lose that role. How do we give that back to them? They didn't lose the value, that's just what they believe. How do we do that? How do we get that back to them?
There are many individuals that I have seen over the years that come in with those psychosocial stressors from before. They joined the military to manage those. Now all of a sudden, you take the military out of the picture, they're still back with those.
They've never learned how to develop the the coping skills and the cognitive skills to be able to manage those things. They're just back where they were initially in the first place. Why would they not be having that whirlwind go on in their head at that point in time?
That's our roles as clinicians is to help them to get that. Now how do we get them there? When you're talking about those risk factors, a lot of those symptoms inherently push the person.
Even in our culture, the American culture is very much an individualized culture. I got this. I'll do this. When I was a kid, you stub your toe, suck it up. It'll be okay. In the military, we're taught: follow commands. Go, go, go. That's it. We have that whole mentality going on. Changing that and our culture as well is important, to say, it's okay to ask for help. That's starting to change.
Seth Gordon: If you can get them to come and talk to you, that's the beginning of care and of them moving to a place that's healthier for them. That's what it sounds like. That's what it feels like. But you're fighting against them not wanting to allow anybody else into that pain.
Jay Wainscott: It's not what they're trained to do.
Tara Consolino: But this is where I challenge them. Listen, when they're coming in and they're sitting across that desk for me, and I say to them, if you were your child, if you were your son, your daughter, what would you recommend to them? And when they look up and, they say, get care, come see you. I'm like, then why is it not good enough for you?
So that's where we really have to start by reframing that it is okay to seek help. It is okay to directly ask people: Are you having thoughts of dying by suicide? Once you ask that question, you give permission for people to be honest and they're no longer isolated and they're no longer alone.
Veterans' Voices is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. Support for the series comes from Wright-Patt Credit Union and the Montgomery County Veterans Service Commission.
Special thanks to Christopher G. Johnson and Michigan Public for production assistance on this episode.
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a trained listener, call 988 and dial 1 to access the Veterans Crisis Line.
