News From the Cause
Veterans need strong connection to civilians to help transition (The News Tribune)
January 18, 2012
As readers of this newspaper likely know, last year Joint Base Lewis-McChord suffered a record number of suicides (TNT 12-30). Tragically, this increase reflects a nationwide trend; suicide rates in the Army have doubled over the last 10 years.
Clearly all is not well with our armed forces. Divorce rates are climbing, and the unemployment rate among younger veterans now stands at 30 percent – twice the rate found among younger nonveterans.
In this column I’d like to draw attention to a slow shift occurring in civilian-military relations that contributes to the growing challenges faced by soldiers re-entering civilian life.
Recently the Pew Research Center published the results of its extensive surveys of veterans. It found that almost half of veterans who served over the past 10 years have had a difficult to very difficult time re-integrating into civilian life.
It’s not at all clear what accounts for soldiers’ growing readjustment problems. But I’d suggest that part of the answer might be found in that same Pew report. Despite 10 years of military conflict, over this time frame only half of 1 percent of adults have been in uniform; compare this with the 9 percent of adults who served during World War II. Military service among us is now at its lowest level in 70 years.
Not only do very few of us today join the military, but we know few people who have. Since the end of the draft in 1973, the nation has relied on a dwindling all-volunteer army with high rates of re-enlistment for its national security. Soldiers today are much more likely to look to the military for longer-term employment; the military today is a profession more than a tour of duty.
Changes in the size, composition and expectations of soldiers have resulted in military personnel who are increasingly isolated from civilian life. The Pew report finds that civilians today have less meaningful and sustained contact with those in uniform.
Soldiers in turn have fewer and more select ties to civilian life than was the case when short stints in the service were more broadly shared among the population.
One result has been the growing existence of military subcultures that are both self-contained and unfathomable to outsiders. For many civilians, those in uniform can seem like members of a strange cult best to avoid, rather than a representative group chosen to carry out our collective security needs.
This lack of civilian contact, along with the more prolonged exposure to military life that is typical among soldiers, can contribute to the ex-soldiers’ re-integration problems. Many have a harder time understanding and identifying with popular American culture and its norms; many too, have a tendency to feel superior to civilians and civilian culture.
Re-entry is also made even more difficult by the type of skills soldiers acquire. Often these don’t correspond with skills needed in civilian life. A disconnect between what soldiers develop during their military careers in terms of hard and soft skills and what the private sector values makes re-integrating into civilian life more challenging. Read more here
