it's much more that we ever could've hoped for. have a great rest of your evening. thank you very much. [applause] >> booktv is on twitter. follow us to get publishing news, scheduling updates and author updates and to talk with authors during our live program. twitter.com/booktv. >> in the book "the invisible front", yochi dreazen talks about two brother brothers who died while serving with the arm. he compares the reaction of the army to the two deaths and discusses the efforts made by the brothers parents. to bring awareness to this dramatic stress disorder in military suicides. mr. yochi dreazen is in conversation with major garrett of cbs news.

[inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everybody. welcome and thank you for joining us this evening. my name is richard fontaine, i'm the president for new american security. it's a pleasure to welcome all of you here to celebrate the publication of the new book by yochi dreazen, "the invisible front: love and loss in an era war." yochi dreazen, as many of you know, is one of the very best national security journalists in america today. he is the managing editor of foreign policy and he has spent nearly four years on the ground in afghanistan and iraq reporting and spending most of his time embedded in front-line combat units.

he's been a longtime reporter for "the wall street journal" and has served as a contributing editor to the senior national security for national journal. above and beyond the all of the illustrious journalism accomplishments, his readers, which i think include most of us in this room, discern a deeply human touch and a full appreciation during and after the battle. the recognition that he has received with the editors association top award for domestic military reporting on military suicides and the psychological impact as well. he wrote his book while he was a writer in residence at the center. during his year with us we discovered that not only is he a world-class author but a wonderful colleague and friend.

he looks deep inside to the human side of war. and it fully animates the book that we are here to celebrate. in "the invisible front", he tells the story of the grants, the loss of two sons one to combat them want to suicide. and they are leading a drive and it is becoming far larger than any individual or family. he tells the story with grace and it's a book that deserves to be widely read and appreciated. if i convinced you of the latter fact, you will be pleased to note that the book will be for sale. and you can purchase it after the conversation is and books will be available to sign. we are going to start the proceedings this evening with him giving us a brief synopsis

and overview of the book. then we will go to conversation from there and then open it up to the audience for questions. it's my special privilege and pleasure to introduce yochi dreazen. [applause] >> thank you. thank you all for coming. before i start, i want to thank richard and some people in the back of the room as well. carter and sean, a lot of people that made me feel welcome when i was trying to rustle up any granola bars that were haphazardly spread out the office. i'm very grateful and i look forward to talking and hearing your thoughts and your questions. i just bought the center of this book had a norman rockwell type family. they have three children that were extraordinarily close,

kevin was the middle child and was sensitive, the perfect one when his parents would say do something, he would do it without hesitation or without thinking, jeff was the older brother, he was more rambunctious, he drank and he was someone who was the life of the party, and kevin would to buy himself in the corner and then there was mallonee, the young sister, the one that they try to look out for wherever they went in the world. they were a single unit and like many military families, they moved from base to base and from country to country. and they built a social network wherever they went. for the two boys they were patriotic in every sense of the phrase. they looked at their father and they watched him and send from his early start in kentucky to being captain in germany to moving on to korea to moving and doing tourism in saudi arabia and kuwait. for them, this was the highest kind of public service and they both wanted to do the same

thing. so they went to the university of kentucky. they went to the rotc program, jeff went into combat and for kevin it was to be a doctor. to try to help others. flash forward a few years, jeff is the older of the two, he's commission, he's getting ready to go to iraq, his brother is a year younger and about to enter the final summer before he would be commissioned. what nobody knew because he had always been smart and funny and just the sweetheart of the family, was there was a darkness inside of him that he was trying hard to control. and he was battling with clinical depression and put on medication. and they found out that if they discovered him on medication than they will kick them out. the decision sent him spiraling. after his death, the family founded found a to do list that

he had left himself, do laundry, pick up food and the last item was take kos into the bathtub. they didn't find out until much too late. he just played golf in the resource to me one morning to play one of the last rounds before he left and kevin didn't show up. and his brother wasn't there. he was looking at his watch. he called his sister and said have you seen kevin. and she had not. she knocked on the boy didn't hear anything. she opened the door and saw him hanging. he had hung himself from the ceiling fan. at first she thought it was a prank that her brother was trying to pull one over like they had in the past, but then the horrors came through and that sometimes kill spiraling. and he thought, can't serve in the army anymore. and they pulled through but just barely. a year later, jeff was on a

mission to clear a bridge in falluja, was part of a place where i spent time in, one of the bloodiest moments in the country. jeff was walking ahead of his men and he saw something glimmering on the bridge and he didn't know what it was, but something said that it's not good. and so he turned to the men behind him and said stay back. as he turned, the bomb blew up. it was an ied. on the bridge. he died and his mentor them. so now the family has lost two sons. on his last mission when he left, jeff had on him his brother's driver's license. they were so close in life, he said at least they are close in debt. that's how they tried to pull through. so now there are thinking that if you lose one child, how do you pull through? and if you lose to children, how

do you get out of bed? have you find anything that can fill the void? at first i thought they couldn't and they thought it was the end. he thought if only i had prevented jeff from going to iraq, he would still be alive. if only i had said the kevin, you don't need to do this, if he was off medication he might still be alive very but they decided there still a way to go. carol said mark one night that this is either the chapter in our lives or the book. they decided a chapter. mark came back and at this point he was ascending and had more prominence and power. what he sees around him and what we all know to be true is people coming back with ptsd, wounds that you can't see, those that are taking their own lives and the suicide rate is rising and rising. versus 2009 and that goes past the civilian rate and then in 2010 it continues to grow on and on to where we are now or more people have killed themselves and died in afghanistan by a significant margin.

or more people die every year than the year preceding. so this year it's about 350 people. many are serving in the army national guard and army reserve. someone came back and this is what he was discovering. he found that it wasn't just this clinical term for stigma, which was a real issue. but the closer that had a callousness to it, in one particular case the brigade headquarters, someone hung up the sheet that said i'm going to see a psychologist because i'm a coward and i'm soft and [inaudible] and this was in there for a few hours. this was there for days. in another case someone wrote a suicide note on their wall, thankfully they got help before it was too late. but these army court-martial punishment for defacing army property. so this was the statement that he was finding and meanwhile,

the suicide numbers are ticking up higher and higher. so he confronted with this and he is a person who understands more than any officer in the military what it is to lose someone that you can't see and to loose someone who you love when he didn't know that they needed help until it is too late to give it to them. and he knows that for many of the young soldiers and for their spouses and kids that that is exactly what they are struggling with is that question. so mark decided to do what he could to change it. the policy that he puts in place are ones that are ultimately replicated. they are so obvious sounding that even now i wonder how they were not done sooner, but the truth was they were not. one was a hotline where if you called in the call went through his personal assistant and then went straight to him. so wasn't something where you call them in the call would bounce around, was a direct line to him but has now been

replicated with a better more defined system. and again, it seems like it should be obvious, but it wasn't. at fort carson, the mental health facility in hospital were in the same building. one floor. if you are a soldier brave enough to risk being mocked for seeking help and that your courier might and if you someone saw you seeking help, if you're going to do all of that and you walked into that elevator, you knew that any moment they would know that you were going there. that's something that you felt you needed to keep secret would no longer be kept secret. so he said that makes no sense and he moved them to a different facility. another one that has been replicated across the army like most things, there's horrible acronyms, which i won't tell you about. if you ever helped him, but the letters and told her to pronounce, having a psychologist

it could be a stranger or a therapist where the soldiers come back and says, tell me how you feel. and the soldiers thinking, who the heck are you, how can you possibly know who i am? and so the idea instead was have a single therapist assigned to a single brigade. before they deploy, while they deployed, when they come back, so this was someone at the scene who has gotten to know them. the idea is that this would not be a stranger or someone word of the greater soldier or officer would say who are you. but someone that they knew. that worked and worked tremendously well. mark had an ally that he did not expect. and i mention this way because this next story gives you a little bit of a sense of some of the people that were pushing against what he was doing and some that were pushing for it. people who are pushing against were saying that people who have depression, some of them are

trying to get out of their service, they don't deserve to wear a uniform. that was the phrase that people said about him. they said he was stopped. and that was the word that hung over him. but then you have people who are the toughest of the tough, those that you would think would definitely not be the people who would agree that these wounds are real or how you treat them. one of them was a man who is a brigadier general that was the toughest of the tough, he did multiple tours in afghanistan, and he had been a lieutenant colonel. for him it was also personal but for a different reason. in afghanistan during a bloody stretch of his brigade, a soldier was unusually gentle and thoughtful, someone who didn't belong and it wasn't a place for him. but he was in the military, he was in afghanistan, and he killed himself.

the question that he face was what you do? and how do you own more like someone who killed himself? you treat them the same way as a person who died in combat? you give them a military funeral of matthew put them into a church? what you do? do give them full military honors? what you do? and the one individual said this man does not deserve the same kind of honor and he said, he sure does. he was with us fighting here and he died because of what he saw and what he did and it's no different. he's a casualty for us and we will give him the same. and they did. they are extraordinarily powerful. and then the helmet near it. randy george became an ally, someone who is not just this very tough man that was in the corner. by the time mark left, it had

been the highest when he got there in the lowest when he left. i don't want to suggest that there was a happy ending to this. and as always you probably knew. it's not something where they left and went there and found the problem and solved it and moved on and things were hunky-dory and good. billina the military except that there's a suicide problem that they did not accept before. there's tremendous money being spent. but the military today is not one that existed then. but there is no silver bullet. this is not an epidemic that has been cured. this is not something that we have the best strongest military people to face. going back to a second of mark and carol, they found her business and the pain of what they were experiencing never went away. i've known them for five years and they worked with me on the book, based day that my house committee spent time with my

wife. their family and i feel like family to them. i've seen them talk about their son and i've seen them do it 10 or 15 times and every time they do it almost a decade later, every time they do at a chair up in the word closure is tossed around. there is no closure for people who have lost two children. that pain never leaves them. but they talk to a crowd of people and they think maybe one person in the crowd is struggling, maybe one person thinks that i'm weak. maybe one person thinks that they are hovering on the line between getting help when they need it and surviving and not getting help when they need it and not surviving. they think of that one person gets help, a close friend says you need help, if that person does it, then it's worth it. i will close with this and take

questions if there's interest and time. so this is an 11 year fight is still going and they have found happiness and way of living and finding a purpose. their daughter is also a close friend and she will be here this sunday and she will have made a life. when you meet her, you will not know that this is a girl who buried her brother. she's found happiness and love. and occasionally she feels guilty and she wonders if i deserve to feel happiness and is there something wrong with me that i learned to laugh and love after losing my brothers. she's found happiness in a the way of getting through life and fittingly she is a nurse. she's trying to help other people. i leave you with that. it's easy for us to say that we support the troops, it's easy to applaud and it's all wonderful.

but there's nothing wrong with that. but soldiers who come back, they are not people dead you understand. these are people who reflect our society and we reflect them. when the thing they kill the most people was from this [inaudible] in 2010 suicide took more lives. and as with the army, the suicide rate and the difference is getting bigger and bigger. for longtime suicide was something that high school kids did in high school kids were bullied. college kids were stressed. if their grades weren't good, that's when you really had to worry about suicide was with those age groups. now the biggest rises men in their 50s and 60s, those that didn't serve and came back

damaged, but those that lost their job and figured out how to get another job. and if they didn't, they think they can't support their family and so i choose not to lead. that is where it is now rising. so i leave you with that, the military is a microcosm of reflection. it's not as if we can stand back and say them and it's not us, because it is. there are people who are now serving and they know this all too well. and we know all too well. there's a disconnect that there's money to be there and it's dangerous work to be there. i close with saying that they're doing what they can to bridget and i hope it away to people who read the book, my hope was to help in the best way that i could. i think you for your time and i look forward to taking your

questions. [applause] >> i think that we can all see how vital the issues i am how insightful the work that has been done in his. peeking into the conversational program of the evening, we have major garrett with us, which is probably well known to many of you as the chief white house correspondent for cbs news. and also a correspondent for national journal. major, what do you. >> i just want to apologize to everyone, the conspiratorial nature of the washington dc traffic was indifferent to this event, but in no way does this impacting the extraordinary nature of this book. i just want to say that you talk about a transformational member of the army after vietnam, my cousin decided two weeks ago of

parkinson's disease and was also one of those who serve and be a non-and decided to stay. to be a part of the junior officer corps that change the army for the better after vietnam. he is a brother of all those who decided to stick out after vietnam. in that way, i have two dear friends whose children committed suicide in college. it's an experience that resonates with me. and if you read this book, it's a book about tragedy but also transformation and that that's sort of where i want to begin. at the white house the president signed letters in the same way that he did to someone who has died in combat and that was the transformation within the building itself, should the president do the same thing. should these beyond equal levels? 's woodworking itself through gradually. and there was something

beneficial because you heard from the author himself and i want to start with what you end up with. but this isn't a happy ending but the beginning of a process that is going to carry on for a long time. where would you say that we are, military culture society, in dealing with this and comprehending it, and how long do you think it will be until any of us can say a corner has been turned? >> we are at a point where it is understood and it sounds like a low bar, but it's not. for a long time it was pushed back at the suicide epidemic even existed and that is fine. there is a deep acceptance and that is great. that's a massive improvement. we look at soldiers they still feel scared about seeking help. if understood, there's an effort to fix it, but it's not yet fixed. one reason is the army is the

definition of hierarchy. and so i spoke to a general that i had gotten to know in iraq and afghanistan and i asked them about textbook ptsd. they said they came back and their wives didn't recognize him, they had flashes of anger, all of the things that you understand is ptsd. and this was at the pinnacle of their career. and i asked him if i could use your story her story in name. with one exception the answer was no. so until that changes and you have people saying at the bottom of the military, you can get through this come you can have a career, you can have a family, you can have a life that's healthy and full. until that changes, that issue won't change. >> can you talk about that, there is a quote in here leadership must step forward and acknowledge their own poster mattox stressed by visibly seeking help. that is what he told you.

let me talk about the terminology. it's called poster mattox stressed and they said let's not add to the stigma by calling it a disorder. if that conversation you had in researching and developing the book? >> it is and it's a question that is fair. and if you call it a disorder, are you saying that a person is sick or broken in some way? there are a lot of people that cared deeply about the issue that believe that when you say the disorder, the person here said as i'm broken and i can't be fixed, why should i come forward. general odierno, the current chief of staff, general dempsey and mike mullen and the secretary of defense, all of

them felt this. bob gates is not a man prone to be overly emotional. he is not a man in this way. i asked him about what he thought about this and what he said to me since as he felt at the time he left he had poster mattox stressed his order. and he felt that it had changed him. he said he knew we had to leave the white house because whenever he was asked a question about any issue, all he thought of was the soldiers who come back with burns and all he felt was this. >> we will take questions as we move along.

we can do that at any moment. so when we do that or go to the questions. your hand is up, please go ahead. >> hello, i just spent the last five years at the walter reed army medical center taken care of soldiers coming home. and you listen to their nightmares and you listen to their tears and hopes and dreams. we can talk about this until the cows come home. i'm from new england. but the problem that i see, and i don't know if you have any insight on this, is that middle management needs to be held accountable when they court-martial a soldier for writing a suicide note. i can't tell you how many times soldiers have told me that i asked my kernel to send me to

the chaplain or the psychiatrist and he swore at me, i can't repeat what the soldiers coming but anyway, this happens more than once a day. and it happened for years. the whole five years that i was there. so i can't even imagine after leaving there three years ago, still hearing these stories, as the military in general doing anything across the board told the supervisor and the kernel whatever rank the supervisor is, accountable, and to bring them a sensitivity course and holding them accountable in saying that if you can't locate your soldier and recognize poster mattox stressed, then you don't need to be in this position.

>> or least not be hostile to them when they express a desire for help or to do something that is suggested. >> it's a great question, one that i talk about. right now the short answer is no. the average officer is not held accountable if there is a state of suicide in her unit. when pete carelli was the vice chief of staff, he would give the desoto expedition what happens. to my mind this will change with a system of accountability. when your kernel and you discover that there are 50 people that are arrested or other things like that, you probably won't get promoted. but right now as they discover that three people kill

themselves or 20 of them sought help and were turned away, you don't have the same punishment. until that changes, i don't think this goes away. about a month ago when the joint chiefs of staff were summoned to talk about sexual assault, or clair mccaskill was pushing forward with different senators about sexual assault. the only place where poster mattox stress disorder was seen is that the ptsd is exactly the sar soldier in combat. they were at the mercy of some of these intimidating men. the question is, can you point to any one because of assault in their unit. and they went to the head of the rain corps and the answer was no. and ultimately there were two people that said yes. the coast guard and general ray

odierno. so they are two of you have a culture where this tragedy is happening, this horrific crime where you begin to see suicides among female soldiers which are unheard of, consult until they are, this won't change. >> one other thing that he brought out of the book is that soldiers who feel this are afraid that if they raise their hand they are if they are canceling out their opportunity to be promoted. so you have it on both sides of the continuum. they're afraid to say anything because their career might be derailed and those that are indifferent or hostile, their crews are not derailed. >> exactly. and exactly. take the air force. if you are a pilot, especially a female pilot because the rape situation softens with female members and if you are brave and if you suffer, it's taken away

from years of precaution. so inadvertently the person who was assaulted or raped or whatever the issue, they also lose the things they want to do in the cards to their whole life. so there are cases where a person is punished and way for two different reasons and the end result is the person feels twice victimized. the stigma remains real for a good reason. because there is a chance that if you seek help that your career will end. they're such as this whole irrational feel, but it makes it all the more heartbreaking. still today if you seek help, there's this chance. we talk about stigma. we have to recognize it in the press and. >> next question? >> thank you. >> hello, i am with a

distinguished group of people including the ahead of the dod prevention suicide office. congratulations first on your block. and i want to emphasize one of the points that you made. in a downsizing military, it is incredibly hard for anybody to come forward for treatment. basically no one will come and seek treatment unless they have already been identified as going out the door, and then that is where they will get there. this is a problem that does not have an easy solution. just something to recognize that no matter all the platitudes we have about reducing stigma, the reality is that if you want to have a courier in the military you don't want to be seen as going to get help. and i think that the recent rand report that came out, and meg might be able to corroborate that, service members will not go to seek treatment. >> you think that this is

generational? that it will take a generation of those who have been exposed to this, who have a different concept of this organic way from early service and their time in this particular space within our military, that generational transformation is what ultimately is going to be? because they will have grown up in this culture and come to different conclusions than those now they metz i hope so. i really hope so it. >> do think that that's really the only thing that is ultimately going to be the way transforms it? do think it can happen before that? >> the generational situation will be a long time off. it could ship before that, but it does matter. you're going off for you see commercials all the time for zoloft and xanax is part of the culture. something that people discuss openly. i think it matters that matters and that there is an age difference for someone younger

asked among older if they see it differently. one thing that's interesting in talking to people about the book is almost everyone i talk to says i know somebody and that's one of the few things, i know that they have sought help, know someone in my family, my husband, my child, it reminds me of what i imagine upholds them was 50 or 60 years ago, everyone who had someone in an that was alcoholic or knew someone who is an alcoholic for culpable talking about it. almost everyone i've spoken to, this is true that someone knows someone with this issue as part of their life, but it's still not there. it's like right below the service but not their. [inaudible question] >> please go ahead. >> all right, the department of mental health for johns hopkins school of public health.

for many years we have continued to retaining and deployment of soldiers with diagnosed mental health disorders and soldiers on multiple psychotropic medications. we know that soldiers with pre-existing mental health disorders, when exposed to trauma, they are at a higher risk of chronic morbidity. and yet for many years the u.s. military turned a blind eye to the deployment of soldiers with diagnosed mental disorders on multiple drugs, 10 or more that ordinarily would've been not deployable. we can all recognize a reason for this is that we could not have met the manpower requirements without this. what does the current epidemic of mental disorders in the military and this practice say about the sustainability of the all volunteer force?

>> i think that when it comes to the baseline question of will the military continue to function as a has been, and asking this question in a direct way, it's often applied as should we go back to a draft? should we spread the burden so that's not the same 1% again and again being deployed. we asked about the shrinking à la kerry, but it gets worse because people are competing for jobs saying that i know that that guy is a little bit off sundays, but that guy is not, and i think that the military is sustainable as a massive health institution, but this is a bigger strain than the things we normally see. a person comes back missing a limb and it's terrific. a person comes back with burns and it's terrific. but we know how to be that person and how to treat them as a side entrance society. if we see someone with a cane without a leg, we can kind of be

compassionate to them and we can see that they suffered in a very visible way. they person comes back and you look at them and you don't know that's the case, we don't know how to process. we have a friend that has come back and has various issues and he looked fine. nothing about how he carried himself, his demeanor, and he walked into a mcdonald's with his dog and he said, don't walk in with a win, how have a service dog. well, he had crippling ptsd. but the because nobody could see it, and nobody would treat him the way that they would someone who is missing a limb. sustainable? yes. but that issue in the way of not being able to understand that at that level of compassion, that is a serious issue and i don't know how long it takes for that to change.

>> it seems inherent in the book, there's an underlying conclusion that multiple departments by their very nature increase the likelihood of these very problems. and if you have a finite tricking or is, you're going to have multiple deployments. each and every deployment, i would think, it would almost increase the likelihood of these kinds of psychological thomas. >> it's a great point. when you have this, it is likely not a lot but obviously that, builds and if you hear an explosion or another explosion, that doubles seeing the smoke if you are not seeing a body in front of you. the somatic stress disorder else

of overtime. this is something where it's not as if you have it and then cured, you could have it for decades and the struggling with it for decades. but for the most part you are functional and then 20 years later something happens and it's great. it's hard to predict because it's not something where you can see the immediate illness and then know that it's gone. one thing is there was a young soldier that was hired to be the guy that did his laundry and did his paperwork and he was as perfect soldier and he thought the sky is brilliant and organized and good looking and can do the job perfectly. he had deep depression. mark didn't see it.

and his wife got lenses but nobody saw it. and then it builds and builds and suddenly burst. he killed himself the day before he was supposed to start working. but this was something as you say exactly and correctly that it was in that he came back and everything was terrible. it was that he went and came back and things old and built. >> when you get to the part of the book, as heartbreaking as it is up until that point, that was among the most devastating things i came across in the book, that he was so confident about this, that he felt so good about it, and it was in the proximity of this undiagnosed is seen, this ravaging internal trauma. it's devastating in the book. and illustrative of so many things that are hard to see even

when you are intentionally trying to be, it can't always be found. it was incredibly poignant. yes, sir, right here? >> hello, dave mattingly. going back to a point that you made in the book, was that when soldiers supported to iraq and afghanistan, and sometimes they were looked at as -- oh, he will be on the side. but in reality going back and seeing their buddies come back from this were coming under attack, that they were still going to sustain the additional, of ptsd. and it's not something you can say that he was in infantry or up walking the line every day, that it's still out there for other people that were involved in the operations.

>> it's a very good point. i know some who believe that this came from hearing explosions again and again. and it's just the impact of explosions never quite knowing and it doesn't have to be something like this. we think that it's sometimes really dramatic. let's say your friend gets shot. it could be things that don't look quite as bad or severe. but when they build and it can take them to the same dark place. >> over here. >> even if we were successful in

dealing with the somatic stress and working with soldiers were coming back and things like that, what are we doing to work with the civilian community out there? because if they were remiss in terms as eking treatment while they were in the service, there's all kinds of stories about the ticking time bombs of veterans, we also need to go beyond that. >> my dear friend is here is we had someone come back and whether it's the deer hunter indian on or a sniper killing people on the streets, it easier and the lazy way of this and it's kind of hard.

and we thank them for their service and we applaud them as we can. at the same time there is a question in fact i will go crazy one day, shoot up his wife or his kids. but i give michele obama and joe biden lot of credit about this and they talk all about how this doesn't make a person week. ty carter was one of the greatest and he kept running out, driving back to wounded soldiers and he's back now. he has ptsd. he does not use the word ptsd, uses only the letters pts, he has a level of celebrity and uses every single speech he has to say that seeking help does not make you weep that it makes you strong. one thing that he told me about

is that you go through war, the intensities of war and you come back and you have been exactly the same as when he left, that is when something is wrong with you. going to war should change it. you should be able to hear what you hear and be the same. and i find his point very powerful is that only then is something wrong with you. if you are the same. so all you can do is hope that the more people like this out there, more people who and read this book, those who talk enough friends, the more it changes. but it's hard. i agree with you that it is hard. >> right here. >> hello, my name is deanna rodriguez. i'm a freelance writer and i'm very interested in this topic.

i have many friends in this community. i'm hoping that this dialogue will perhaps grow the program while young men and women are in training to prepare them, and then also when they reintegrated to this id when they come back from deployments and they see that they can go and ask for help and it will be given automatically and that there will be some sort of reintegration program where they are given tools to sell this as. and then it becomes a normal thing. but of course you're going to have these feelings and these situations arise. i think that once they make it an implied, like you were saying, that it's natural to have these anxieties and after months if not years of hypervigilance in this sort of atmosphere that is completely

foreign and different than anything any of us can even imagine, it will become a normal part of their training and the reintegration into society. >> is that contemplated? >> was theory is cohesion and break everyone down so they can stick together. i'm sure they save with knowledge this up sometime, maybe we are tampering with us. isn't that sort of thing at the camp level? >> yes, it is. it's sort of a clinical phrase, it's was lindsay training. that idea of the suggesting of giving people tools while they are there, so that it's not something of theirs are going what sodomy. something where they have at least an idea that might come in when it comes that they have a sense of what to do on their own. this is funny to me not because i make light of it. there is someone that i knew

that was deeply into yoga before it became cool and the military has adopted yelled out. it's something that many soldiers and units do before they deploy to learn how to relax. they do deep breathing. some do acupuncture. and some people thought that we were sort of out there. but now it is widely accepted. and it's interesting as i have had this experience for the book where you see it 20 muscular guys unfurl their yoga mats and that is how they prepare to go to war. >> hello, my name is michael little and on with the united states navy. i hear everyone talking about the adverse reaction of someone serving in combat, they come back, it kicks in, but what about the nontraditional people,

those that see the enemy every day when they go to work, they have felt the mental fatigue every day. maybe they come back to nothing. they come back and the lady over here asked about who was accountable about point. well, who is accountable? because your commander may not understand what you just to play too. so when you start showing signs, they may not understand what it is that you're going to. we are seeing that one more. i apologize that my phone is ringing. and so i just want to make sure that we know this is not just combat the players are going out there. and they are seeing this stuff every day and they come back to

nothing. >> they are also not active-duty soldiers. last year the active-duty suicide numbers for the national guard on reserve roads. and i think part of it is if you're in the active duty army, and no one would say the system is perfect. but if you come back to the community that knows what it is to serve, they have a husband away or a wife way, the system is in there, but you come back and go back to a small town where you live. there may not be a facility, the neighbors may not have met someone who served or have a support is dumb. so a soldier may come back to an imperfect system. and that is a heartbreaking part of this and the reason why they

may not go down the way we hoped that they would. >> as a moderator who showed up 30 minutes late, let's all forget it of the cell phone going off. [applause] >> enqueue. i'm the director of the defense suicide to mention office. i know that mark is working hard tonight because he has been texting me. and he is the director of our vets for warriors program which is under the defense suicide prevention office. taking a moment and speaking a little bit for him, although that is hard because he's usually right out in front of me. but he's not here, so i have the microphone. one of the things that he and i have spent a lot of time and energy and effort on is building a peer support network within the military community are active-duty guard and reserve service members.

i'm hearing a lot of misperceptions about who is at risk and there's a lot of things being thrown around. we know that the biggest risks are among the young junior and listed that have never been deployed, they have not been in combat, only 12 to 14% have actually ever been in combat. we know that this is a problem among our youngest of troops predominantly. and so what mark has worked with me on and we have dealt this, this is for you, best for warriors.com would be the way to get in touch with our 24 24/7 here support group, we are about to launch a facebook mobile application to make it more accessible. it is what we are doing that

gets blocked in two what gets done. i'm hoping this can be a take away message because i know that mark is passionate about reaching out and asking the right questions, showing that you care, being nonjudgmental, educating the community and educating about what you can do. not what is wrong, but the system and will be can do within the military and the service at the guard reserve local, everyone should leave here tonight knowing that there are resources available, treatment work and work is phenomenal at running this program. >> that's right. my point is not to say that the dod is bad at working at these issues. people take this very seriously. but it is what running out that

no system is perfect and this one is not perfect. no matter how many resources or how hard people work or how well-intentioned they are, the point is not to say that they don't care. it's to say that there are things that are still being worked on. one issue that has come up is an issue is means restriction. what that means is we tried to make it harder for a person to kill themselves. israel had a very high suicide rate than what they were discovering is for decades the soldiers would go home on leave and bring their guns with them. so you'd see young israelis and they would be in your warm and they were shockingly young at times, they have a backpack on one side and an m-16 on another. the soldiers returned themselves with those m-16 guns. what they did was take those away and the policy changed that

you do not bring this home on leave or did it so there's a lot of talk in the civilian world. ..