Hello, just wondering if anyone knows anything about suicide watch. A friend of mine is at basic right now, and apparently the particular fort has a higher suicide rating than most. She is now on suicide watch, hoping to be released... but she said if she will be, she'll have to leave by Oct. 1st because of the new fiscal year. Anyone familiar? Do you think she'll make it out? This girl has been a friend of mine for a long time, and I know she's not BSing if she's saying she's suicidal. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Suicide watch is for people who have expressed some ideation of harming themselves. A battle buddy is to be with them at all times and their bunk is moved into the middle of the bay where fireguard can keep an eye on them as they sleep.
It happened a lot in Basic- she'll be out within a week or two.

Thank you so much for your reply... that put my mind at ease. Is it true that she'll have to be discharged by October 1st? She's only been at BCT a little over a week. It seemed odd to me, I figured if she had to leave in a week they would have told her by now, but she's still in the dark. Thanks again!

quote:

Originally posted by JessyRiot:
Is it true that she'll have to be discharged by October 1st?

No. The fiscal year has nothing to do with her discharge. She has to be evaluated to see if she was serious about the suicide attempt, and then paperwork (the military runs on it) has to be prepared to effect the discharge. She'll be discharged when this process is completed.

Something isn't right then, because that is what her commander told her; that if she were to be discharged, she would have to leave by Oct. 1st. There was a recent suicide at her boot camp... and her commander told her that in the last cycle, there were 5 people on suicide watch, and all 5 went home. I don't understand why they would lie to her though... the last thing they should do to a suicidal person is give them false hope. I'm hoping they're maybe just waiting it out to see if she gets better or changes her mind, because I'm sure they don't like to discharge people for any reason. Hopefully they're just making sure they're doing the right thing.

Jessy,
It's very nice that you are concerned and are looking out/wanting the best outcome for your friend. I hope she realizes how fortunate she is to have a friend like you.

Haha, thanks... me too I guess.

Jessy,

I think that what isn't right might be what your friend is telling you. Often times when someone gets into a situation like your friend they are too embarrassed to tell you the whole story.

What fort is your friend at?

Ya what base is your friend at. Your a great person for caring about them make sure you write and talk to your friend as much as possible. Basic is very tough and if someone is sucidal thats place things could go wrong. About them lieing to him they could be for some reason they tend to play even more mind tricks on people getting out. Tell him to just realize it can take some time but he will get home and it will be all over sooner then he thinks.

She's at FLW, I actually just got a call today from her. She said she's def. coming home, but she doesn't know exactly when... sometime before Halloween. Thanks guys for your help!

I too was at FLW. We had a girl go on suicide watch in the beginning of red phase (first 2 weeks) she didn't get to go home until after we completed basic, and went into the AIT part of training. She was there for a very long time, but eventually they will send you home.

It's possible that your friend didn't understand what her Commander was telling her. But like someone else said, she'll be processed and sent home at some point.

At my Basic Training, people on Suicide Watch were locked in the small gym and had to sleep on mats. The night guards would check on them every hour.

Kinda doesn't make sense now since there are so many ways to hurt yourself inside a gym...

I'm sure your friend will be home soon!

This discussion is two months old but I wish to inform those who participated in it that two recruits on "suicide/unit watch" at FLW died in the summer of 2000. One of them was my son PV2 Nolan E. Stites and the other was PVT Gary R. Moore. Their story is available on line at, http://www.5280.com/issues/2004/0406/feature.php?pageID=53.

The reason I'm posting this message is I seek communication with individuals that have experienced or witnessed unit watch.

quote:

Originally posted by Oldsinge2000:
This discussion is two months old but I wish to inform those who participated in it that two recruits on "suicide/unit watch" at FLW died in the summer of 2000. One of them was my son PV2 Nolan E. Stites and the other was PVT Gary R. Moore. Their story is available on line at, http://www.5280.com/issues/2004/0406/feature.php?pageID=53.

The reason I'm posting this message is I seek communication with individuals that have experienced or witnessed unit watch.

First off, losing one soldier is too many. My sympathy to you and your family, sir.
I have had probably a dozen soldiers on suicide watch in the last year. None of the soldiers were diagnosed as to commit suicide but had suicidal thoughts. Two soldiers that were more seriously diagnosed than the others were immediately hospitalized by the mental health personel. I know here at Ft Jackson, there are not enough mental health personnel to handle all of the cases for BCT. One issue is that you get a majoity of soldiers that use the system to their benefit by acting "crazy" to get discharged. In many cases it works. The downside is that the system is flooded and when there is a soldier really at risk of harming himself, there is a chance that he gets lost in the system. The small number of Drill Sergeants I believe should also be addressed. Generally there are 2-3 DS per 50 soldiers. This is unsatisfactory in my opinion. There is no way that the DS can teach, coach, mentor and supervise that many soldiers effectively.
The unit watch program has its advantages because it assists the DS by having two soldiers monitor while he has a chance to take care of the other soldiers. But the obvious issue with that is leaving two "trainees" in charge of a soldiers well being for a limited anount of time. I dont have an answer for this issue except that we need more, highly trained mental health personnel that can see soldiers immediately when there is a need, and properly assess their personal situation, taking safety of the soldiers as their primary concern.

Oldsinge2000..

I am so sorry for the loss of your son! I read the magazine article intently and was quite upset by your ordeal and the fact that so many people have tried to, and have been successful at committing suicide at BCT.

Having worked in the hospital on a mental health unit, I am a bit disturbed by this for many reasons. First of all, I can understand many people using suicidal ideation as a way to be discharged but those who truly ARE mentally unstable should have a safe place other than a "unit watch." Secondly, for those who use it as an excuse to be discharged, why do so many people join and then wait until BCT to change their mind?

I'm wondering why they don't react like a civilian hospital ER doc would and take things seriously and admit the PT. Perhaps they could incorporate a small barracks where the person can "safely" stay without the ridicule that pushes the person deeper down? Hopefully it would weed out the fakers OR atleast just have a place to stay until they are sent home. Just wondering. I'm sure there is a good reason it isn't that way and considering I haven't been to BCT, I wouldn't know what it is yet.

One other important question for future people going to BCT. What is a good way to handle a situation like that if someone in your platoon has suicidal ideation?

Thank you for responding to my post. I know the army faces many problems training thousands of recruits. I served in the army over 40 years ago. You get teenagers from all walks of life, some adapt quickly and others never can. I agree with you that many recruits fake problems to get out of the service. I despise them; they created the environment that kept my son from getting proper help when he became ill. My desire to communicate with individuals about unit watch is to make my son’s case available for educating personnel about depression and suicide. From February 2003 to May of 2004, I participated as a guest speaker in the army’s suicide prevention training program. Are you familiar with the ASIST program? It is an excellent and effective program that personally helped me intervene in several suicide attempts.

When my son died on Fort Leonard Wood, there were a total of ten soldiers in his company on unit watch during the eight-week training period. Something was wrong with the training there. I later met some of the soldiers in Nolan’s FLW Company and even became a close friend with one who was on unit watch for a week.

If you read the magazine article I posted you will see my son’s chain of command was less than professional. One of the soldiers that guarded Nolan said his drill sergeant instructed him to wake up unit watch soldiers every thirty minutes to see if they were coherent, my son was on unit watch for fifteen days. I don’t know if recruits on unit watch at Fort Jackson have their belt and bootlaces removed but my son did. Being paraded around with out belt and bootlaces in front of peers is extremely humiliating. Nolan was removed from training but not his unit, which is ostracism. The sergeant in charge belittled him in front of his peers telling him to “kill himself and get it over with, that he would help by opening the window” this is ignorance. According to a young lady that emailed me five years later, she witnessed my son “being made fun of” in front of the company on a couple of occasions. No sergeant should ever belittle and make fun of an ill recruit in front of his peers; that exacerbates depression. I’m sharing this information to make personnel aware of the danger of such actions.

Prior to Fort Leonard Wood my son was a rugged outdoorsman that, as a teenager, on several occasions served as a hunting guide for active duty and retired military Officers and NCOs here in Colorado. He had all the big game trophies by the time he was sixteen. During his senior year in high school he attended all nine months of his Army Reserve Unit’s monthly drills. His company commander allowed him to participate in the annual rifle qualification and he had the highest score in the company, although he had yet to take basic and never fired an M16 before. This netted him a promotion before he started basic training. All of his older military friends considered Nolan as an ideal candidate to be a model soldier.

I agree there is a shortage of well-trained mental health care providers in all branches of service. The ratio of patients to doctors in the army is several times greater than what is considered acceptable in civilian practice. Funding is poor with some post having difficulty paying bills on time. However, it cost little for drill instructors to take suicide prevention serious and educate themselves about depression and suicide. It always bothered me when I give my Power Point presentations to army doctors, chaplains and sergeant majors that there were no drill sergeants in my audience. I wish I was still active in the program but the Pentagon’s manager of the program retired and the funds ran out.

I have great difficulty accepting the idea of “unit/suicide watch” in IET because it transfers the care of patients from the professional to recruits in training; they know nothing about mental health care. If a recruit is suicidal he shouldn’t be in his unit, if he is not suicidal, why remove his belt and bootlaces and humiliate him in front of his peers? Intentional or not, as the parent of a son that died on unit watch, I see it as punishment for saying you have a problem.

I’m open to further discussion on this topic and hope my sharing may inspire an understanding about mental health problems in IET.

Oldsinge2000, I am very sorry to learn about your son's death. The system that was suppossed to protect your son failed somehow.

I don't know what happened in that particular situation, but I can tell you about my own experiences with suicide watch in BAsic Training.

I served two years as a Drill Instructor at Fort Sill, OK. We had an established suicide policy implimented by our brigade commander, that required us to do several things immediately on learning of a suicide attempt, or a suicide threat.

First off, we had to place the trainee under suicide watch. That meant that at no time would the trainee be left alone.He usually had two other trainees assigned to watch him. If he tried anything, one trainee would stay with him, and the other would run to the nearest Dril Sergeant or Cadre. Yes, we removed their belt and shoe strings so they couldn't hang themselves. It may sound redundant, as they were constantly watched, but removing any means of harm was a double safety. On a side note, I work in an Emergency Department, and we completely undress any potentialy suicidaly patients, bag their clothes and remove them from the room. The patient is then under constant observation in a monitored room.

An "Incident Report" was immediately sent up the chain of comand, informing them of the threat or attempt. As I understood the process at the time, this report went all the way to the post commander, a Major General.

The trainee was then scheduled to see community mental health at the soonest opportunity. We had somwhere on the order of two thousand trainees at any one time at Fort Sill back then, in addition to the regular garrison soldiers. It sometimes took a day or two to get them in. They remained on suicide watch until mental health services saw them and cleared them of any suicidal intent.

For a time, we made suicidal trainees wear a orange road guard vest. I could look into my troop area and immediately tell if the suicidal trainee was present or not. It was eventually decided that that was to demeaning for the soldiers. Personally, I would prefer the soldier to be alive, and embarrassed.

In two years, I never had a soldier make a suicide attempt. There were threats, but mental heath services sent them all back. Most were fit for duty. A few were seperated.

Understand though, trainees were not responsible for the care of a suicidal soldier. The Drill Sergeant, the First Sergeant, and the Company Commander were responsible for that trainee. We got them to mental health professionals as soon as possible. Until then, we didn't try to treat them, we just kept them safe and alive.

I wish to take a moment to thank all who are participating in this discussion, especially Jumpmaster_82 and Iron Erik. This is the type of input I’m looking for. I need to hear more about the problems instructors face when training recruits and the SOP they use. When I participated in the army suicide prevention-training program, trainees would come up to me afterwards and relate their experiences with unit watch. Some are favorable stories and others are not. The few favorable stories I got always dealt with regular duty assignments and not IET. (Who talks about a house that isn’t on fire?) The only case I know about where a regular duty soldier died from suicide while on unit watch, took place on Fort Story, VA, September of 1999, however there may be other cases I don’t know about.

The army stance is it is better for a soldier who has problems to be with his or her friends than in a hospital because the RTD rate is much better. This idea was officially adapted in 1999 based on a study that took place on Fort Campbell, KY. The study also showed a savings of $357.00 a day by keeping the patient out of the hospital. I would be very interested to hear opinions on this concept, especially from anyone who knows, first hand, about such cases.

All of the unit watch abuses given me took place in IET. The number one abuse by far is sleep deprivation such as having guards shine a flashlight in the face of the recruit, running a floor buffer into the recruit’s mattress, dumping them off their mattress while they try to sleep, threats to make them fear sleep, sleeping under bright lights or having the guards deliberately wake them up at 30 minute, 45 minute or 60 minute intervals. I’ve met four soldiers that took basic in FLW, covering a ten-year period; that made the claim they were ordered to wake up the recruits they guarded. Other cases related to me are forcing unit watch recruits to address themselves as psychos during formation and one case where a Fort Jackson Company First Sergeant mocked a young lady on unit watch by handing her a knife to kill herself with, as she stood in chow line. Yes, I already heard about using fluorescent safety vest to identify unit watch recruits. My list is long.

Why do these things happen in IET? Does anyone know recruits who were on unit watch, given an ELS and what happened to them after they returned home? Does anyone have an opinion how unit watch affects soldiers that experience or witnesses it after they finish training? Does it create a stigma against seeking help for problems later? I’m full of questions because I doing research for a book I’m writing. As a note of interest the army is coming out with a new textbook that includes this topic. I’m looking for more good responses. Thanks!

I'm curious as to why the Army would take a recruit's belt and shoelaces and let them keep their shaving gear, and other items that could be used in a suicide attempt? If they truly have suicidal ideation, they will use whatever methods necessary.

We had one young lady in my company in boot camp go into the head and attempt to cut her wrists with safety razors. As far as I know, she was ok, I never saw her after that night...she was packed up and sent home.