Leaders who have personally experienced the aftermath of a suicide-related event can provide important lessons and recommendations for military leadership and policymakers. This podcast executes a thematic analysis of interviews with leaders, chaplains, and behavioral health providers who responded to garrison suicide-related events and explores leader decision-making related to memorials, investigations, and readiness

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Keywords: suicide postvention, garrison, military leader, chaplain, behavioral, health provider
Episode Transcript: Leader Perspectives on Managing Suicide-related Events in Garrison
Stephanie Crider (Host)

You're listening to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production focused on national security affairs.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Decisive Point Welcomes Major Thomas H. Nassif and Captain George a Mesias, co-authors of "Leader Perspectives on Managing Suicide-related Events in Garrison” with Dr. Amy Adler. This article was featured in the Parameters Winter 2022–23 edition.

Nassif, a research psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), serves as the Institute's lead on mindfulness training research efforts with the US Army War College and the US Army Training and Doctrine Command. He's also the principal investigator on a military suicide research grant funded by the congressionally directed medical research programs.

Mesias is a licensed clinical social worker and researcher at WRAIR. He's advised commands and planned behavioral health operations across the Korean theater of operation and served as behavioral health officer for a Stryker Brigade. He is an Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training master trainer and a graduate of the Army Social Work Child and Family Fellowship Program.

Dr. Amy B. Adler is a clinical research psychologist and senior scientist at the Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience at WRAIR. She's had numerous randomized trials with Army units, published more than 180 journal articles and chapters, and served as lead editor of Deployment Psychology and Anger at Work, both published by the American Psychological Association.

Your article opens with, “In the last decade, suicide has become a leading cause of death for service members, claiming more lives than combat and transportation accidents.” This is a hard topic to ease into. What else do we need to know about service members and suicide for this article?

MAJ Thomas H. Nassif

Suicide is a difficult topic for a number of reasons. And many, if not all of us have been touched by it in some way, and the ripple effects across the unit and community when there's a suicide-related event. It's a really important topic, and there are many initiatives that the Army is engaged in that address risk factors and prevention.

Our paper tackles a different part of the problem. you probably heard of prevention. What we're going to talk about today is postvention, in other words, what leaders do in the aftermath of a suicide-related event.

First some terminology. So we define a suicide-related event as death by suicide, suicide attempt, or suicide intent. And by leader, we're referring to chaplains, behavior health providers, and unit leaders. And the leaders that we focused on in the article were chaplains, behavior health providers, and unit leaders.

Although postvention has been studied in a deployed setting, we focused on garrison settings, which run the risk of being overlooked.

CPT George A. Mesias

This is Captain Mesias. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. As a social worker, I've served as a therapist for soldiers, and I've served as a behavioral health officer for a Brigade combat team. Suicide is an often-discussed topic due to ACE tra...