NPR had an excellent story on Tuesday about the proactive anguish of retired Master Sergeant Chris Scheuerman in the aftermath of his son Jason's suicide while deployed in Iraq. It's a story everyone should read, because it raises any number of salient points about the topic, including who military psychologists are really working for anyway.
The main article is called, "Father Blames Military for Son's Suicide," and if you read the story, you'll see why that is. The text of Army Private 1st Class Jason Scheuerman's suicide note is included, and it's quite sobering. There are several linked stories that are well worth reading as well: The timeline of Jason's last days is here. And the article that the Associated Press did about Jason, "A Soldier's Suicide: Did He Have to Die?" is also linked here. If you want a short course in what the issues are surrounding young soldiers who suffer combat trauma and are driven to kill themselves, these three articles give a pretty good education in the basics. There's no shortage of participants behaving badly, and the "system" not really "working" to protect a very troubled soldier from himself.
It's actually pretty heart-breaking to read the story, and to put yourself in the place of the dad, who was highly tenacious about finding out what really happened to his son. The truth gets revealed to him little by little, as documents he demanded from the Army under the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) slowly trickle their way to his house. The Army doesn't even initially release the son's suicide note; in fact, they say there wasn't one. (It shows up randomly later on.) It's pretty clear that if this were a civil situation, the "employer" would be sued for wrongdoing, and there would be the potential for an enormous jury verdict for the family. But in this case, the employer is the Federal government, and as the dad says, when the Army psychologist is an arm of the "employer," it's very unlikely that they're going to go against their self-interest, and advocate for the troubled soldier. According to NPR's story, Chris Scheuerman says, "Military psychologists work for the employer. Their career is ...[dependent on or tied to] the decisions they make to ensure that soldiers go back to the front. That is an inherent conflict of interest, and I believe that conflict of interest prevents the provider from being a true advocate for the patient." Scheuerman concludes, "The psychologist who saw my son was not an advocate for his safety."
Read the articles -- Jason Scheuerman's situation is hardly unique. (We've blogged recently about the rash of young soldier suicides, including here.) There are way too many Jasons who aren't being helped when they need it, and who not only fall through the cracks, are sometimes even given a nudge or a push. In Jason's case, that's basically what happened. Was it malicious? Or just incredibly insensitive and poorly timed? Who knows. It certainly was tremendously ill-informed, and counter-productive. Poor Jason and his family. It seriously sucks to be mis-understood by everyone around you, at the time when you need help the most. Let's hope his death isn't going to be in vain -- that's exactly what his family hopes. I'm glad they had the courage to make their painful story public -- it will help show the way to other agonized families, in the wake of son's and daughter's suicides, how to backtrack and really find out what happened. And probably the biggest "lesson" of the story: how do you throw someone a lifeline when they really need it, and not miss that chance? Or worse, push them off the ledge?
And what, if any, is the duty of care owed to a troubled soldier when he or she sees a psychologist on the battlefield? Is it substantially different from that in civilian life? Because it seriously seems as though Jason's case was handled poorly. He didn't help matters -- "contributory negligence" -- but seriously, he was sick. It's much more concerning the overall low level of perceptive, sensitive treatment with which his fairly dire case was handled, by pretty much everyone he came in contact with. Anyway, soapbox over. Great articles on a troubling topic. Well worth reading and thinking about.
