The "record" transforms to stigma and a potential threat to
present job and future career. "Records," more often than not, compel
the person in a suicidal crisis to look elsewhere. Elsewhere includes the
adjacent civilian community's crisis intervention resources, specifically,
the suicide prevention telephone hotline where callers need not provide
identification - they're as safe from being identified as anywhere they can
be under their circumstances. The hotline worker does what can be
accomplished quickly to keep the caller from slipping deeper into crisis
and acting out a threat to suicide. They listen, offer nonjudgmental
feedback, and together with the caller, explore options.
Almost invariably, when a civilian community crisis worker (telephone
hotline or face-to-face) needs information on options unique to military
life to help a suicidal military member or someone in his or her
immediate family, the source is the nearest base's health care, personnel,
or other administrative functions. Very often, when contacts with base
officials occur and the worker has the name of a suicidal caller,
confidentiality is literally vital; being tagged in the base's records as
someone who phoned an off-base crisis center carries almost certain
exposure to military authority, and might well add the final straw.
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