increased suicide risk
Questions:

1. Causes of suicidal incidents in military collectives.

2. Suicide prevention among military personnel.

One of the major problems for the Armed Forces is suicide incidents. They have a demoralizing effect on the personnel, negatively affect the moral climate of military collectives and their combat readiness, and cause a sharply negative attitude towards the army on the part of parents, civil society and conscripted youth. Can such tragedies be prevented? Military practice gives a positive answer to this question.

According to experts of the World Health Organization, the changes taking place in Eastern Europe in recent years, and especially in Russia, have led to unexpectedly serious consequences in the mental state of the population. Our country is experiencing a real epidemic of psychosomatic diseases, one of the main manifestations of which is suicide syndrome. So, at present, the number of suicides in Russia is 2 - 2.5 times higher than the critical level. But a century ago, the number of suicides in our country was the lowest among European countries. What is the reason for this state of affairs?

To a large extent, the current situation in the country is due to an increase in the number of people suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction, reactive states, neuroses, mental disorders of childhood and adolescence, etc., in the emergence and development of which socio-economic factors play an important role. They contribute to the spread of disillusionment, nihilism, disbelief in the future, spiritual ill health of society, and various forms of social deviations.

Thus, the suicidal phenomenon is a stable social phenomenon that obeys certain laws related to the socio-economic, cultural, historical and ethnic levels of development of a country or region. It becomes clear why the command of a particular military unit is not always able to influence the initial causes of suicide. But to minimize suicidal incidents, as military practice shows, the officers are quite capable.

Everyone is at risk of suicide. But for different categories of military personnel, the causes of this phenomenon have their own specific form. Thus, domestic disorder, unfairness in solving official issues and socio-legal insecurity of military personnel, hopelessness of service and uncertainty about the future, a decrease in the authority of the army and a negative attitude of part of the civilian population towards the military, a low level of monetary support and problems arising in family life, give rise to suicides of officers and warrant officers.

However, most suicidal incidents are still committed by soldiers, sergeants, sailors and petty officers. And this is not due to the quantitative composition of this category of military personnel. The main role here is played by psychological features that make it the least stable in the fight against life's difficulties.

First, it is youthful maximalism, high self-esteem, mental instability, expressed in breakdowns, inadequate reactions and actions, unbalance, excitability, infantilism, acute perception of injustice. Faced with the difficulties of military service, young people are acutely aware of their failures, react painfully to the rudeness and tactlessness of their commanders and colleagues. In conflict situations, some of them commit suicide even for minor reasons. It is no coincidence that the age of 15 to 23 years is one of the main peaks of suicides. In suicidology, it is called "peak of youth". What is an ordinary problem for an adult may seem like an insurmountable obstacle for a young man. Even because of seemingly insignificant troubles in your personal life, tactless comments, ridicule, unfounded accusations in your address, a young man may be in a state of crisis. That is why it is important for the commander, based on knowledge of the individual characteristics of subordinates, to be able to predict the possible consequences of the impact on their psyche of both unfavorable life events and the educational measures applied to them.

Secondly, these are specific socio-psychological conditions of life of conscripted military personnel: the impossibility of arbitrary changes in the type of activity, alternating work and rest, changing the team and, consequently, the circle of communication, certain restrictions on spiritual and material needs, and much more. For young soldiers, the situation is aggravated by the separation from relatives and the absence of close friends, the fear of violating the norms and traditions established in the team, and being subjected, so to speak, to psychological and physical "sanctions" for consciously or accidentally deviating from them. Joining the army and navy, young people face restrictions due to the specifics of military service, they must obey strict military discipline, show personal responsibility for their behavior. Some, especially those who suffer from an unstable nervous system, have not received the appropriate upbringing "in civilian life", can perceive any army difficulty as a failure of life goals. And this, in turn, increases the degree of suicidal risk. Therefore, the efforts of commanders, other officials and especially military psychologists should be aimed at ensuring that young soldiers adapt more quickly in the team; creating an environment of goodwill, attention to the needs, requests and state of mind of young soldiers and sailors; taking care of organizing their full-fledged rest, which allows them to relieve nervous tension.

The development of a psychological crisis that contributes to the decision to commit suicide is associated with at least two conditions::

a) the loss of a person's life prospects, i.e. the destruction of a person's value system;

b) a person's subjective assessment of the current circumstances as hopeless.

The psychological mechanism of suicide goes through more or less prolonged stages of the struggle between the motives of life and death, the search for a way out of the situation. In the pre-suicidal period, soldiers and sailors in most cases begin to write disturbing letters to their parents and friends. In an effort to somehow change the environment, they turn to the commanders with requests for transfer or for sending them on a business trip, use various reasons to get to the medical unit or hospital. Depression usually lasts from a few days to 2 to 3 months. As a psychological phenomenon, it is most often localized mainly by psychological means: interested participation, empathy, good advice and encouraging words. A warrior can get all this in a team if he has close friends and sympathetic bosses.

With the decision to settle accounts with life, the suicidal phase begins. Persistent psychological stress soon leads to a decrease in the overall tone of the body and to a physiological response, which manifests itself in frequent bouts of headache, changes in blood pressure, rapid fatigue, irritability, etc. The physiological reaction sharply exacerbates the already negative mental state of a person, which in most cases without any external signs can end in suicide.

Studying the materials of suicide investigations, medical records of persons who attempted to kill themselves, as well as conversations with them and their colleagues make it possible to formulate the most common motives and reasons for suicide:

- conflicts related to official activities (difficulties of military service, hazing relationships, etc.);

- conflicts related to the suicidal person's antisocial behavior (fear of criminal liability, fear of shame for negative actions);

- personal-family conflicts (unrequited love, cheating on a loved one, divorce, serious illness or death of loved ones, sexual insolvency, etc.);

- material and other motives.

The above classification of causes is conditional. It reflects only the predominant areas of intrapersonal conflicts. The occurrence of such conflicts among military personnel depends on the conditions of the social environment in which the serviceman lives, his individual psychological characteristics, and a number of other factors.

Individual prevention of suicidal incidents requires the following from the commander, a military psychologist::

a) assessment of the psychological state of a particular warrior at the time of his getting into a difficult situation;

b) determining the depth of his emotional shock and the available margin of psychological strength;

c) the inclusion of mechanisms that can relieve psychological stress, increase the resilience of the individual, self-confidence and capabilities.

When preventing suicide, special attention should be paid to the most difficult time for military personnel - the period of adaptation to service, new living conditions, and new relationships. It is in the first year of service that the maximum number of suicides and attempts to commit suicide occurs. It is necessary to pay close attention to complaints and statements of young soldiers, respond to them in a timely manner, know the psychological characteristics of their subordinates, be well versed in the motives of their actions, avoid facts of humiliation of their honor and dignity, resolutely stop cases of mockery and bullying, distortion of disciplinary practice. Correspondence and meetings with relatives and friends play an important role both during the period of adaptation to military service and in the future. It is useful to know about the health status of parents and immediate relatives of subordinates. For early detection of military personnel with signs of suicidal behavior, a thorough examination by military doctors and psychologists is of particular importance.

The greatest difficulty and at the same time the greatest practical significance in terms of suicide prevention is the identification of the psychological characteristics of suicidents. The difficulty here lies not only in the lack of uniform approaches among commanders, doctors, and psychologists in identifying and classifying these features, but also in the need to consider them in unity with the specific stressful situation in which they play a fatal role.

Research by scientists has shown that people who commit suicide are characterized by such features as:

reserved, secretive, low sociability (in 67% of cases); anxiety, suspiciousness, highly developed sense of guilt (in 45% of cases) ; tendency to dramatize, negative assessment of events and facts (in 31% of cases); unbalance, irritability (in 29% of cases); hypersensitivity, impressionability (in 20% of cases); overestimated self-esteem and claims for special recognition. As a rule, these are people with neuropsychiatric instability, who tend to break down the nervous system with significant mental and physical stress. If deviations from the norm are insignificant, then they do not put an imprint on the personality as a whole and do not have a noticeable impact on other areas of the serviceman's life. At the same time, in painful and pre-painful conditions with neuropsychiatric instability, these deviations are not only strongly expressed, but also have a stable character, significantly affect the entire personal structure and behavior of a person, limit the possibilities of his adaptation to the changed conditions of life. Such military personnel are a group of people with an increased probability of developing mental illnesses and inappropriate behavioral reactions to traumatic life situations, among which suicide syndrome is not the last place. Therefore, it is necessary to involve psychophysiologists and military psychologists to identify individuals with signs of neuropsychiatric instability at the earliest stage - during the examination of young recruits.

The basis of preventive work is an individual purposeful conversation, during which the subject is simultaneously monitored. It is conducted according to a special plan, which defines topics for discussion and formulates approximate questions asked during the conversation. The plan is supplemented with a list of unfavorable signs that can be identified during the conversation and observation of the behavior of a serviceman. As a result of the conversation and observation, those signs in the behavior of young soldiers that can be described as unfavorable are recorded and evaluated: speech defects, motor skills, poor physical development. Individuals with increased irritability, impressionability, frivolity of judgments, timidity, shyness, a pronounced sense of their own inferiority, exaggeration of their shortcomings, belittling of successes and virtues, extremely painful reaction to rudeness and tactlessness, ease of developing affects, inability to protect themselves are identified.

For the same purpose, the study of documents of the personal file of a serviceman is carried out. You should study the profile, marital status certificate, and health status data. Special attention is paid to people who have suffered diseases or brain injuries, who have had poor academic performance in school, a tendency to use alcohol and drugs, who were registered in a psychoneurological and drug treatment dispensary, a children's room of the police, an inspection for minors, as well as those who were brought up in unfavorable families, where scandals, drunkenness, bad relationships between family members prevailed.

The competence of the officers conducting the survey includes only the determination of the presence and severity of signs of neuropsychiatric instability without their further interpretation. In case of detection of painful and pre-painful manifestations (various borderline states, mild mental retardation, initial stages of mental illness, alcoholism and narcosis of the individual), the serviceman should be referred to a psychiatrist (neuropsychiatrist), who will decide whether to treat the serviceman or submit him to a military medical commission to determine fitness for military service for health reasons..

The results of the survey should be taken into account when assigning military personnel to military specialties that place high demands on the human psyche. But first of all, the examination is necessary so that the unit commander always knows which of his subordinates first needs preventive care. Preventive work in this case takes on a specific focus, and there is a real possibility of predicting and preventing suicide cases.

For the prevention of suicidal behavior, it is important to constantly communicate with military personnel not so much in an official, but in a domestic, friendly environment. It is necessary to expand the scope of such communication, instill in military personnel faith in their own strength and capabilities. You can do this if you refuse to emphasize the official, businesslike tone in conversations on personal topics. A heartfelt conversation with a soldier who is in a state of crisis will help prevent suicidal manifestations and gain the time necessary to refer him to a medical specialist.

Suicide prevention should pay attention to both specific and general conditions that may contribute to the decision to commit suicide. This is the state of military discipline, compliance with the daily routine, control over personnel, organization of guard and internal service, the procedure for issuing weapons and ammunition, and much more. Fair, individually differentiated disciplinary practices are essential, eliminating cases of impunity for gross violations of discipline and concealment of crimes.

Control over the statutory organization of the life of a military team, the study and analysis of relationships between military personnel, their behavior in the team play a special role in the prevention of suicidal incidents. For example, the untidy appearance of young soldiers, their passivity in public life, performing the most labor-intensive work, placing them in uncomfortable places in the dining room, sleeping quarters, and frequent requests for medical care for bruises and injuries received allegedly under accidental circumstances may indirectly indicate the presence of hazing relationships in the team. This can also be indicated by the data of medical examinations and information contained in the medical books of military personnel.

Every fourth suicide is committed with the use of weapons and every third-while being in a daily outfit or guard. Therefore, the selection of people for service in the daily dress, in the guard, painstaking work with each of them, a sensitive response to the state of mind of the day and guard - essential conditions for suicide prevention. It is necessary to establish regular control over the performance of service by each serviceman, not to let the issues of distribution of outfits take their course, to take care of providing the persons of daily duty with all the necessary types of allowances, to pay attention to whether the persons of daily duty are replaced by other military personnel, whether they are given time for sleep and rest.

A prerequisite for suicides is often the negligence of officials in exercising control over the safety and delivery of weapons and ammunition. Reliable safety and control over the use of weapons should be the concern of all officials. Only under this condition is it possible to exclude its use in suicidal states.

Legal education and training of military personnel, explaining to them the rights and opportunities to protect themselves from criminal attacks, and the right to necessary defense are also important for suicide prevention. Effective forms of such work are meetings of military personnel with military lawyers, legal information, classes on legal topics, open trials of military courts in the presence of personnel.

If a suicide or suicide attempt has occurred, measures must be taken to thoroughly investigate this fact in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, Article 91 of the Charter of the Internal Service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and Instructions to the bodies of Inquiry in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The commander of the unit is obliged to report this to his superior officer with the obligatory notification of the military prosecutor.

In the event of a suicide attempt by a serviceman, urgent measures are taken to provide him with medical assistance, he is temporarily isolated from personnel and is under constant supervision of medical personnel. In addition, he must be examined by a psychiatrist, and if necessary, be sent for a military medical examination.

The correct approach to the suicide prevention of military personnel focuses commanders, military psychologists and doctors on a detailed study of the entire complex of psychotraumatic factors that a soldier faces, on the development of measures to neutralize them and on the formation of effective measures to relieve the psychological crisis. Confidence in the possibility of reducing the number of suicides among military personnel is based primarily on the fact that solving this problem does not require any significant organizational changes and material costs. A careful analysis of the causes and conditions of suicides proves that they can and should be prevented.

Colonel of Justice Alexander YANKOV, Head of the Methodological Department of the Military Courts Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, State Adviser of Justice of the 3rd class, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation. Major of Justice Igor ZADOROZHNY, Inspector of the Department, Adviser of Justice of the 2nd class

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