And for some reason Mental Health First Aiders have been binned. You are not allowed to use your qualification if you have it! MHFAs were at least some people in the workplace who knew what to look for and had an 'interest' in mental health. We spend delightful hours each year learning how to plug a gunshot wound with a tampon, which I have no doubt has its uses but teaching people what mental illness is and how to recognise it in themselves and others should not be seen as an optional extra. I might be wrong but I am guessing we loose more people every year to suicide than we do to enemy fire. There have been some high profile stats from the Aussies:"It's devastating that Australia has lost more serving and former serving personnel to suicide than it has lost through operations over the last 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq," Veterans Minister Matt Keogh said.
There have been more than 1,200 deaths by suicide among current and former Australian Defence Force (ADF) members since 2001.
A comparison of UK Ministry of Defence data on suicides since 1984 in the UK regular armed forces and UK Armed Forces Deaths: Operational deaths showed that, since 1984, some 905 serving members of the military killed themselves whilst serving compared to 802 deaths related to hostile actions.
Yup, not great for us either (and this doesn't include veterans), how much time do we spend on preventing deaths on operations? Maybe some of the time spent learning what ROCKETS stands for would be better spent elsewhere?