What Does Veteran Suicide Have To Tell Us?

 
Introduction
I am part of the core team of the Warrior StoryField sculpture project. Our team of veteran and civilian artists has been in regular conversations for the last six years on the issue of veteran suicide. We think something is lacking in the suicide prevention conversation. It has to do with the absence of community and the lack of common purpose.

Veteran suicide rates have remained little changed over the past several years. For all the metrics, the risk factors, the evidence-based best practices, the clinical theories and the treatment programs, shouldn’t we question, what are we missing? The metrics, the risk factors, the evidence-based best practices, the clinical theories, and the treatment programs are all views from within the fishbowl of culture USA. That is, looking from the inside out. We only get what the inside of the fishbowl reflects to us. This view does not offer perspective. What if we could look at the issue from the 40,000-foot view, from outside the fishbowl view. Would we see something different? If we want different outcomes, we must change the culture. No, not the culture as a whole. But small pockets of community at a time.

I suggest the veteran, who survives a non-existential war, an unjust war, comes back from that war with a different awareness than that of civilian persons within the fishbowl. The combat veteran acquires both an ‘experiential authority’ and an ’emotional authenticity’ that does not mesh with the authority of clinical theories nor cultural illusions.

The Illusion of Safety
Our culture carries the illusion that uncertainty, impermanence, and death can be managed through the pursuit of safety, predictability, control.

Here is the problem. The war veteran knows there is no safety. Try telling a veteran the situation is safe. That will turn them off in a heartbeat. And worse, it is now even more challenging to establish trust and connection. In short, the clinician’s authority circling round in the fishbowl of bureaucratic power is in direct conflict with the experiential authority of the veteran. What’s missing?

Failure To Provide Basic Needs
Is it possible that the issue of suicide is a failure to meet basic needs?

We all have these basic needs:
1. The need for survival, the ability to negotiate threats effectively.
2. The need for love and belonging, a state of being welcome in one’s world.
3. The need for power, effective self-agency, positive self-esteem.
4. The need for freedom-autonomy.
5. The need for fun, experiencing pleasure equal to or exceed displeasure.

The veteran of non-existential war comes back to a world where they experience these basic needs as severely lacking. In the case of non-existential war, the heroic myth is not validated; therefore, betrayal. When the vet comes home from the war, they find they no longer “belong” in the culture. Their sacrifice is not normalized. Further, that which connects us is what empowers us. And, that which disconnects us is what dis-empowers us. Dis-empowerment and social disintegration rule the day for returning veterans.

If we want to prevent suicide, then we must change the social circumstances that contribute to suicide!

What is War?
War is the situation in which two different parties engage to out-violent each other. The veteran acquires the behavior of out-violence, from their training, from their mission, from their combat experience. They engage in out-killing the enemy to prevent their death. Thus, trained to be on constant guard of a threat to prevent an ambush. This training is still active in them when they come home. Being continuously on guard at home manifests as intrusive thoughts of death, hypervigilance, and avoidance. The readiness to out-violence becomes a primary mode of relating to threat—all threats, real or perceived.

To meet the veteran within his or her experiential authority, we would do better to pose these questions:

What’s missing?

What don’t we understand?

What happened?

How do we relate because of what happened?

What are my options?

What community can I belong too?

The following is a poem to illustrate what the author is saying. It uses his war experience and his reflections on his experience.

What Say I

There are no problems
Only that man makes them so.

I am back from the war,
not home from the war.
You profess me of worth,
Really?

But you threw me away
on the altar of illusion.
That you can escape death
if I am sacrificed in your stead.

If I come home dead
I am memorialized.
No problem.
But, if I come home alive,
major problem.
My surviving the war
is a problem
you thought you escaped.
Not so!

WWII was a just war.
An existential war.
A war fought to be won,
to prevent cultural annihilation.
The heroic myth was validated.
The killing was justified.
The government, the civilians, the military
were all on the same page.
The soldiers, sailors, and airmen
came home victorious, honored.
Later to be referred to as,
the “greatest generation.”

Their self-esteem pumped up,
they came home
to a welcoming community.
They went to work
building industry
a nation
living into the cultural myths.

The Vietnam War,
That was an unjust war.
It was not existential.
It was not to prevent cultural annihilation.
It was a war fought not to be won.
The killing was not justified.
It was murder.
The government, the civilians, and the military
were not on the same page.
The GI, government issue soldier,
was sacrificial, expendable, and human consumable,
for power, for profit, for ideology.

The veteran came home to disrespect, betrayal.
The heroic myth was not validated.
The veteran did not come home
to a community that
validated and normalized
their service and sacrifice.

You profess me of worth?
Really?
Many years later you say,
“Thank you for your service.”
Really?

My innocent civilian identity
was destroyed for a military identity.
I was sold down the path of dehumanization
so that I might kill murder)
the identified enemy.
But in an unjust war,
was the identified enemy
the real enemy?
Government, culture, and dehumanization
are the enemies’.

When home, I am “called baby killer” and spat upon.
When home there is no cultural myth
for re-humanization.
I no longer see the world through my……..
before-the-war innocent eyes.

My behaviors of dehumanization are not OK.
When home, I am no longer part of the military identity.
The unit mission is no longer my job.
I come home with a war identity.
I am now alone, confused.

I don’t sleep.
I have nightmares and night sweats.
I am angry, rageful.
I distrust authority.
I’m hypersensitive to disrespect.
I experience flashbacks.
Depression has me.
I am racked with guilt, shame, grief.
I use behaviors of
hypervigilance, avoidance, self-medication
to attempt to quell the angst of
death anxiety.
And then, and then, and then, I am labeled “PTSD.”
I am pathologized.
The cultural expectation, the treatment goal,
I’m supposed to get over it,
get back into the
cultural illusions
as if nothing had happened.

Treated in programs and medicated
that attempt to repatriate me.
Really?
There is no repatriation
to illusions!
The unjust war experience
does not validate the cultural illusions.
I know the truth.
The cultural illusions are made up.
They are a lie!

I have been “murdered.”

So, in my desperation,
in my isolation
in my self-medication,
I suicide by the slow method.
And, should I kill myself
you are upset.
My suicide is not OK.
It confronts your illusion
that you’re perceived
immortality is real.
Not so!

And, you deny,
you are a killer, a murderer!
You pay taxes.
You fund the war.
You sent me there.
I am back from the war!
What the fuck, over!

~Denny Sedlack

If you are a Veteran having thoughts of suicide—or you’re concerned about one—free, confidential support is available 24/7. Call the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 and press 1, text to 838255, or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net/Chat.

Author, Dennis Sedlack: Now some fifty-one years from his war experience, Denny is exploring art and expression at the Warrior Story Field. That exploration sources the following question: “what is it to re-humanize after the dehumanization of the war experience, the culture?” This exploration is on-going. Retired/Married with two children, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Veteran Advocate and contributing artist/member to the Warrior Storyfield.

Education: Bachelor of Arts, Physical Ed – Humboldt State College, Arcata, CA. Master of Arts, Physical Ed – Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA. Master of Science in Physical Therapy – University of California, San Francisco, CA. Master of Arts – Somatic Psychology, Naropa University, Boulder, CO

Work History:
Military – United States Navy, Hospital Corpsman (E-5) and United States Air Force, Physical Therapist (O-4 Major)
Twenty-five years as a Military and Civilian Physical Therapist (practitioner)
• Four years USN Medical Corps – Tour of Vietnam with Battalion Landing Team 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1968-69
• 10 ½ years USAF – Medical Service officer rising to Chairman, Department of Physical Therapy, USAF Hospital, Kessler AFB, Biloxi, MS
Seven additional years as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in readjustment counseling services with Veterans Affairs.

Editor, Robert Bellows: Civilian Artist, Founder/Orchestrator of the Warrior StoryField Community Project.