If it's accepted that the military base and its adjacent civilian community
should cooperate in suicide intervention, then the civilian and military
agencies need mutually accepted procedures to do the job. If a
community's crisis resource has one set of procedures for cooperation
from the Navy, another for the Marine Corps, and still others for the
Army and the Air Force, confusion mounts and collaboration suffers.
This is especially true when the situation is tight and there isn't much
time to keep a suicide threat from becoming an act. To the telephone
hotline worker in a suicide prevention center it makes no difference
whatsoever if the person on the other end of the line is a soldier, sailor,
airman, marine - or civilian. On the other side of the scale, however, is
the we-take-care-of-our-own turf, and that, to the suicidal person, is
meaningless.
I hoped that, by now, military bases would have been further along in
collaborating with adjacent civilian suicide prevention resources and that
such teamwork would be reflected in base and community media. How
else would a military person or a member of his or her family on the
edge of a life-death decision for themselves know where to go or whom
to phone, especially where their privacy and confidentiality would be
respected - if they decided to take a chance to continue living? Is a city
telephone directory listing for the local crisis center enough?
Agreements, procedures and contact points for military-civilian
teamwork in suicide prevention deserve to begin on a county,
metropolitan, or other regional basis, rather than in single-base to
community understandings, especially where the area has bases
representing different services.
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