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>Maybe that last one is worth investment as well. Not just having an outside party clean it up, but prevention? The military has two readily available levers:

>Maybe that last one is worth investment as well. Not just having an outside party clean it up, but prevention? The military has two readily available levers: money and mandated training. Only the latter is applicable, so we spend hours each year sitting in training full of trigger warnings and trying to destigmatize Discussion about suicide. Young men have a fairly high rate of completed suicide, and removing them from their social fabric must exacerbate the problem. There may be correlated socio-economic factors between completed suicides and the men who go into the military. The powerful factors are the work environment and leadership, which the military works desperately to improve by any means they can contrive, and culture, which the military would be powerless to fix, even if underlying society could agree on how to stop funneling people into suicide. So, if you ever recommend more suicide prevention around servicemen, know that that is why you'll likely earn a rousing, "fuck off."

yellow_lead 3y ago
How is money not applicable? Money can be used to pay for training, interventions, research, etc. 400k would be much better used here than on a custom humidity sensor.
- QuarterReptile 3y ago
  First, you are wrong to say that 400k would be better spent on more suicide prevention than on humidity sensors (no matter how expensively implemented, like here.) By all accounts, that's the only money being spent on humidity sensing; with suicide prevention you're very far down the curve of diminishing returns. Do you have any examples of suicide training or intervention services that need more funding? Are the 24 hour hotlines over-utilized? Do you propose to move the needle by hiring some consultants for flashier training powerpoints? As to the research part, I'm a little curious which aspects of the DoD's suicide research you think need to be enhanced. For my part, I'd like to see base rate data alongside demographic and other statistics in the annual report.

yellow_lead 3y ago

How is money not applicable? Money can be used to pay for training, interventions, research, etc. 400k would be much better used here than on a custom humidity sensor.

QuarterReptile 3y ago
First, you are wrong to say that 400k would be better spent on more suicide prevention than on humidity sensors (no matter how expensively implemented, like here.) By all accounts, that's the only money being spent on humidity sensing; with suicide prevention you're very far down the curve of diminishing returns. Do you have any examples of suicide training or intervention services that need more funding? Are the 24 hour hotlines over-utilized? Do you propose to move the needle by hiring some consultants for flashier training powerpoints? As to the research part, I'm a little curious which aspects of the DoD's suicide research you think need to be enhanced. For my part, I'd like to see base rate data alongside demographic and other statistics in the annual report.