Tackling wicked problems: Suicide in the US military
نویسندگان
چکیده
Every 24 hours a member of the United States (US) Armed Forces commits suicide, while every hour a US veteran takes his own life. These statistics illuminate a deeply-rooted social crisis which eludes experts and military leaders to this day. Billions of dollars invested in suicide prevention seem to offer little relief for active duty servicemen and veterans alike. Military suicide is framed as a wicked problem and the new and exciting theory of Chronic Emotional Atrophy (CEA) is proposed to help explain causes of suicidal ideation in the military. A holistic crisis management strategy via information systems is presented in this work. Depressive symptoms exhibited by military members in emotionally suppressed environments closely parallel those phenomena exhibited by medical patients suffering from frontal lobe damage. The prospective psychiatric information system solution provides frontal lobe stimulation (FLS) to mitigate CEA and suicidal ideation.
منابع مشابه
Out of the Land of Oz: the importance of tackling wicked environmental problems without taming them
Struggling with complex environmental decision making often makes us feel that only the wizard in the movie, ‘‘The Wizard of Oz’’ (Fleming in Wizard of Oz, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, California, 1939) can produce agreeable solutions. However, this need not be the case if we distinguish between the technical information used in decision making versus the process of decision making. Making environmenta...
متن کاملLeading for health and wellbeing: the need for a new paradigm.
Much of the government’s health policy in recent years has focused on improving health and wellbeing. There have been numerous strategies, targets, reviews of progress and calls for further efforts to tackle what are widely perceived to be persistent, stubborn, deep-seated and intractable problems. Such problems are sometimes called ‘wicked issues’ in the sense that they defy easy or single bul...
متن کاملIntroducing a Conceptual Policymaking Model for Tackling Obesity among the Military Personnel of Islamic Republic of Iran
Background and Aim: This study is an epistemological account of the collective nature of the problem of obesity prevalence among the military personnel that by reflecting on the existing knowledge and current and future paths that lead to obesity in the military personnel, we sought to give a conceptual model policymaking for tackling obesity. The prevalence of obesity is a serious challenge fo...
متن کاملBounding Wicked Problems: The C2 of Military Planning
Defining C2 as “the establishment of common intent to achieve coordinated action”, Pigeau and McCann outline a spectrum of approaches for coordinating action, ranging from explicit control through to spontaneous emergent behaviour. They further emphasise the role of creativity in Command. We examine application of Pigeau and McCann’s concepts of C2 to military planning in a headquarters. Many c...
متن کاملRisk factors associated with suicide in current and former US military personnel.
IMPORTANCE Beginning in 2005, the incidence of suicide deaths in the US military began to sharply increase. Unique stressors, such as combat deployments, have been assumed to underlie the increasing incidence. Previous military suicide studies, however, have relied on case series and cross-sectional investigations and have not linked data during service with postservice periods. OBJECTIVE To ...
متن کامل