Suicidal Soldiers

Your email has been sent.

Thanks for recommending The Daily Beast!

X Close

Maya Alleruzzo / AP Photo, file The U.S. Army has changed its policy on treating suicidal soldiers in response to an article on The Daily Beast. Read the Army's comments and Elspeth Reeve's original story below.

UPDATE, MAY 18: On Tuesday, May 11, The Daily Beast ran Elspeth Reeve's article detailing the Army’s humiliating treatment of suicidal soldiers. Among Reeve’s most troubling discoveries was that the Army sometimes forced suicidal soldiers to wear an orange vest that advertised their depression.

In response to the article, the Army has banned the use of the orange vest to single out suicidal soldiers. Under the comments to Reeve’s article, General Pete Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff to the U.S. Army, wrote:

While the intent of using orange vests was isolated, she was correct in stating that it contributes to the problem of stigma; therefore, it has been stopped. Commanders will identify Soldiers needing help through other, more discreet, methods. To ensure everyone "gets the word", I have communicated this guidance throughout the Army. Reducing the stigma that keeps many Soldiers from asking for help is one of the most important things we can do as we implement measures to reduce suicides.

GEN Pete Chiarelli, Vice Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

ORIGINAL STORY, POSTED MAY 11: It was graduation day at U.S. Army basic training at Georgia's Fort Benning last fall, and families were milling around the post, congratulating the new soldiers on their achievement. At a charge-of-quarters desk (a sort of barracks reception), two privates were signing in and out fellow recruits who had day passes to leave post for celebratory dinners with their families. The two privates weren't able to graduate themselves. Both had been injured, were put on medical retention, and would be recycled through basic training. In the evening, after hours of watching their buddies prep for graduation, one private told the other, "I've had enough of this shit," and went up to his room. At around 8 p.m., the second recruit went up to the private's room to get him to come back to the desk and help sign in people due back the next hour. The room was empty, but a light was on in the bathroom. It was there that the recruit found his buddy dead. He had hanged himself with 550 cord, an all-purpose green string that looks like a shoelace and can hold 550 pounds.

The orange vest makes you a pariah. “It’s like you’re walking around in a zoo,” says one recruit, “and you’re the animal."

The surviving recruit's superiors were concerned about him. For two weeks, he was put on suicide watch, a common but not entirely standard procedure for at-risk soldiers. "Two battle buddies watch you 24/7," the recruit, who is still in training to become a radio operator, says. "You have to wear a road guard vest—there's no shoelaces, no bedsheets, no belt." On an Army base, where everybody is wearing the same digitized camouflaged uniform—and everybody is trained to spot small differences, like rank and unit, from a distance—just wearing boots held together by rubber bands instead of laces would draw attention. But a road guard vest is bright, construction-zone orange. In a sea of green, you can't miss it.

"You're in an isolated state," the recruit says. The orange vest makes you a pariah. "You've got the reason you're on suicide watch to begin with on top of the fact that you stick out like a sore thumb," he says. "It's like you're walking around in a zoo, and you're the animal."

As of April 10, 56 soldiers had reportedly committed suicide this year—about the same number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq since President Obama was inaugurated. In 2008, the Army suicide rate climbed above that of the civilian population (it has historically been lower because people with certain mental problems are screened out and few military members are over 65—the most at-risk age group for suicide).

The attention that these suicides have received has mostly focused on the Army’s failure to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers returning from combat, but little attention has been paid to the culture of shame that the Army has created around suicide within units that later on may inhibit depressed soldiers from seeking the help they need. Suicide watch (also called unit watch, buddy watch, or command interest profile) is how the Army deals with soldiers in garrison who express suicidal thoughts but don't appear to be in immediate danger of harming themselves. It's been around in some form since the 1980s, and generally involves a suicidal soldier being watched by one or two fellow soldiers around the clock, and having his gun, shoelaces, and belt taken away, so he can't kill himself.

It’s unclear how widespread exactly the use of the road guard vest is. Not every base uses it, though it is used at Fort Benning, where infantry soldiers, who are more at-risk for killing themselves when they come back, are trained. One soldier-blogger at an unspecified base wrote in the summer of 2008 that “there are around five kids that have to wear big red vests for suicide watch because they tried to.”

The purpose of the vest is, ostensibly, to make it easy for others to keep an eye on a suicidal soldier, but forcing a soldier to advertise his own depression creates a powerful stigma. "When you see what happens to someone on suicide watch—the orange vest, the trips to the chaplain, the drill sergeant talking about them when they're not there, saying they can't handle the military. … When you see that, you're going to think twice about speaking up and saying you need some help. It makes you not want to talk to someone. You don't want to be like that guy," the recruit from Benning says.

View as Single Page