Reduce Suicides; Increase Friendships

If you broke your leg and went to the doctor, you wouldn’t be happy to leave with only a bottle of aspirin; that would be stupid. If you went to the doctor with a broken leg, you would want x-rays, then your leg to be set, then to have the doctor put a cast on it, with an appointment for a followup visit, and physical therapy too. We should look at suicide in the same manner as diagnosing and mending a broken leg. To fix the problem, we need to identify the root cause and address it and not merely provide an institutional bottle of aspirin to ease the pain. Suicide is a symptom of two deeper issues—incredible stress in someone’s life and the inability at that time to cope with that stress. Friends can break into and disrupt the downward spiral of stress and inability to cope that may lead to suicide, but what does friendship look like, and how can we use it in the Corps to reduce suicides?
   
I run marathons, which may by itself make me unsuitable for discussing issues of mental health, and I have the necessarily strong legs to run the distance that eventually killed the first runner from Marathon. However strong my legs are at the start of a race, they are significantly weaker at the end. They are so weak in fact that at the end of a marathon, I will avoid curbs because my legs are so weak that going up or down a curb without a pole or a friend to hold onto may cause me to stumble and fall. Our coping skills are no different than our legs or arms for that matter. Life can wear down our coping skills so greatly that once strong-willed Marines might make decisions that lack integrity or that harm themselves.
   
Let’s look at the common example of drill instructor duty at Parris Island. The mental toughness and will to present the stoic, professional image for 16- to 18-hour days is unquestionably a hallmark of the Corps’ success. How then can it be that when you talk to former drill instructors at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, they will, almost to the Marine, describe how hard they worked and how tired they became and how at least once during their tours they thought of calling in sick when they weren’t really sick (a lack of integrity) or just veering off the causeway, just a little (harming oneself), just to get some rest? Fortunately the thought is as far as it goes, but isn’t it amazing that these incredibly strong-willed Marines even have these thoughts? It is because their coping skills have been made tired from the long hours and exhaustion of the drill field. We need to see coping skills much like muscles and understand that they can become fatigued and overwhelmed by other stresses going on in life. Just because someone can do the coping equivalent of running a marathon on Saturday morning doesn’t mean he has the same ability to run a marathon Saturday night.

Know Your Marines and Look Out for Their Welfare

In the first phases of our careers, we learn that knowing your Marines and looking out for their welfare is one of the Marine Corps’ 11 leadership principles. It is taught and memorized at recruit training and at Officer Candidates School. That’s great. We have memorized a list of principles, but nowhere is there a class or a proposed method for how to know somebody. This very important principle has no follow up. Marines are left to figure out what “know your Marines” means to them. To many officers it’s a platoon commander’s notebook filled with knowledge of whether or not a Marine is married, his wife’s name, his hometown, his barracks room number, etc. I will suggest we need to know our Marines in more detail than that, in areas that may be more intangible than measurable, and that detail will prevent us from really knowing the 40 Marines in our platoon, but that’s okay. In reality, if we focus on our subordinates who report directly to us, a few peers, and our bosses, that will be enough.
   
Marines love to learn in lists, acronyms, and a few clever mnemonic devices. We have JJ DID TIE BUCKLE (justice, judgment, dependability, initiative, decisiveness, tact, integrity, enthusiasm, bearing, unselfishness, courage, knowledge, loyalty, endurance), and BAMCIS (begin planning, arrange reconnaissance, make reconnaissance, complete the plan, issue the order, supervise). We have the five Ws (what happened, who was there, why did it happen, when did it happen, and where did it happen) and O-SMEAC (orientation, situation, mission, execution, administration and logistics, command and signal). Here is another list; this one will provide the framework for the techniques of how to know our Marines. With this framework in place, it is fairly easy to identify what makes somebody “tick.” We are all a combination of five things called “life measures.” These are key relationships, finances, future, morality, and spirituality. It is a simple list but with an endless number of possible combinations that make each one of us unique. It is a simple list but specific enough to use in getting to know what is truly important to a Marine and from where a Marine draws his inner strength and his hope for the future. It is a simple list, but so few of us know these things about our Marines. It is time for that to change.

Marines as Friends

The leadership principle tells us to “know your Marines and look out for their welfare.” To know someone at the level of the five life measures is to know someone deeply. We used to have a word for that kind of relationship prior to joining the Corps; the word was “friendship.” Marines aren’t taught how to make friends. Many Marines equate the term “friends” with “fraternization” and put it in the realm of unprofessional relationships. In fact, most men don’t use the term friend because it connotes a childlike, emotionally attached image of a relationship, and of course, our Marine Corps culture does not need attachments as we move from duty station to duty station. We need professional relationships.
   
Networked computers and the iPod, in addition to a culture of professional relationships, have also affected the concept of friendship. Ten years ago when I went to the weight room I would always talk to the person to the left or the right on the treadmill or between weightlifting sets. Now everyone has an iPod in their ears and is unavailable for casual conversation. My fellow officers and I are also tied to these horribly networked computers and smart phones, lulling us into the false notion that e-mails can actually take the place of conversation. To counteract the relationship robbing ability of our modern Marine Corps culture, we need a new campaign, one that will encourage us to get to know our Marines, so we can know how they are doing in their five life measures, so we can know when they might need help or a word of encouragement or a pat on the back.
   
If you know somebody’s five life measures you will have a very accurate picture of what motivates him and what could hit him so hard that he needs help to get up. If you know another Marine in these measures, then when you see him depressed or dejected you will know what to ask, and you will realize how much stress he may be under. For example, if I want to know my 40-year-old master sergeant, I would want to know about his wife and children, I would be tuned in to his basic financial health, I would know his plans for the future, I would know whether or not he has a problem with abuse or addiction (morality), and I would know if he has a foundation of belief in a higher power (spirituality).
   
Imagine two Marines, both in their mid-20s, going through life. Ralph comes back from deployment to a wife who wants a divorce. He is crushed at first; his key relationship just got taken out from under him, but with some insightful friends, he talks about it and makes it through a divorce. Within 6 months he is on to another duty station, starting over again. Richard gets the same greeting when he comes back from deployment, so his case is much the same as Ralph’s. However, coming home from the club one night, he is pulled over and is arrested for driving under the influence (DUI). He is hit hard financially, but more importantly, his future is in jeopardy. What chance does a sergeant have to be promoted with a DUI? Richard just got two of his life measures shattered—his key relationship has been crushed, and now his future is completely uncertain. Add that to a few thousand dollars in lawyers’ fees and a few more nights of heavy drinking and our friend Richard has a huge problem. Very quickly our happy, healthy existence can be shattered when we take a hit in one or more of these life measures, and the more measures hit, the greater the stress.
   
What will it take for Ralph or Richard to choose to live to see tomorrow? They will need coping skills certainly, but more important, they will need a friend. A good Marine will have many friends; we just have strange names for them. One of my best friend’s first name was staff sergeant, and he called me lieutenant. Strange names for such close friends, but friends nonetheless. We should recognize these close relationships up, down, and across the chain of command and use them to help each other choose to live to tomorrow in times of incredible life stress.

Encouraging and Programming ‘Know your Marines’

Saying “be a good friend; be a good leader” is sadly not enough in this day of computer tasks, iPods, cell phones, and the isolation of the Internet. We will need to actually program time for knowing our Marines. It will take a purposeful effort, over cups of coffee, breakfasts and lunches, running, or beers together, to begin to know a Marine’s key relationships, finances, future plans, morality, and spirituality. It takes longer than having him fill out a sheet for the platoon commander’s notebook. It will take so long that we will really only do it for a handful of Marines around us. We should know these life measures for our direct subordinates, a few peers, and our bosses. Yes, bosses are people too, and sometimes bosses have bad days that should be acknowledged as well.
   
If suicide is a symptom of incredible stress and an inability to cope with that stress, how can the path to suicide be broken? The events that cause the stress can seldom be controlled. Relationships fail; our health is a fleeting condition. What can be controlled is our ability to cope with stress, and a large part of that is building the network of Marines who know each other on the five life measures level. Let us be the steady friend helping a Marine climb over a curb after he has run an emotional marathon and his coping skills are worn down. But Marines, watch out, if you put this effort into knowing your Marines, you may get something the Corps didn’t originally issue to you, a friend.