Military suicide prevention: The importance of leadership behaviors as an upstream suicide prevention target

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the longitudinal relationships between unit cohesion, Army leader behaviors, and subordinate suicidal/death ideation. Recent cross‐sectional research indicates that subordinates who perceive that their leaders instill a sense of purpose regarding military service demonstrate less frequent suicidal ideation. Method Five hundred fifty‐nine soldiers completed self‐report measures of perceptions of leadership behaviors, unit cohesion, and suicidal/death ideation during deployment as well as one and three months following deployment. Latent change score modeling was conducted to evaluate the course and direction of study variables as well as the relationship between them. Results Although lower levels of suicidal/death ideation were related to leader‐provided purpose, leader‐provided meaning, and unit cohesion at baseline, only leader‐provided purpose and unit cohesion prospectively predicted changes in suicidal/death ideation. Conclusions Consistent with the goal of military leadership to augment effective clinical interventions that reduce suicide risk, prevention programs that reach a broader population of personnel should be considered. Enhanced leadership training may be an important primary prevention tool to reduce suicide risk that warrants further research.

High Adversity Resilience Training (HART): Development for emergency responders and defence

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Measurement validity of the six-factor model of psychological well-being in a military sample: Implications for measuring well-being in service members.

“…Notably, analyses indicated that items on the personal growth and purpose in life subscales (r = .74) also appears to structurally overlap. This may be partially due to that fact that in a population highly identified with their career progression, purpose in military service and purpose in life are strongly associated (Trachik et al, 2020(Trachik et al, , 2021(Trachik et al, , 2022.…”

Beneficios de la intervención ante el Trastorno de Estrés Postraumático en soldados. Una revisión sistemática

“…El Trastorno de Estrés Postraumático (TEPT) consiste en una forma de trastorno que deriva ansiedad, obteniéndose en el individuo por la exposición a diversos factores estresantes que le llegan a generar diversos síntomas negativos, de carácter físico y/o psicológico (Murphy et al, 2018). Dicho trastorno se ha analizado en diversos contextos, como en algunos casos y, de manera más singular, en contextos de ámbito militar (Trachik et al, 2021). Igualmente, cuando el individuo y, en este caso, el militar profesional se ve envuelto en un contexto de trabajo donde la situación diaria le genera situaciones estresantes a lo largo del tiempo, le puede conllevar a que alcance el llamado síndrome de burnout o quemado por el trabajo, influyendo este de manera negativa sobre su salud mental (McBride et al, 2022).…”