West Point Suicides Rattle Academy

By: Lisa Foderaro

It is called “the gloom period,” when the pewter skies seem to mirror the gray fortresslike buildings on campus, and cadets hustle from class to class to avoid the cold winds whipping off the Hudson River.

But this winter, the somber mood at the United States Military Academy has been deepened by two recent suicides among the 4,400 cadets — the first since 1999 — as well as two suicide attempts last month. Those followed two suicides last summer by staff members, and come as the Army is grappling with a record number of suicides among its members, many of whom have endured long deployments to war zones.

Last week, the academy — where the Army trains its future leaders and admission is highly prized — began a “stand down,” 30-day suicide-prevention program with an Army-wide training session that includes a new interactive video. It depicts a suicidal soldier and choices he confronts as he spirals downward: One set of choices leads to improved mental health, the other to tragedy.

For example, the soldier struggles with suicidal thoughts after receiving a “Dear John” e-mail message from his pregnant fiancée, who later tells him that the father is the soldier’s high school friend, who has also raided his bank account. The soldier debates whether to seek help, worrying that he will appear weak or invite ridicule.

“You’ve got cadets here, they don’t want anything to stand in the way of their graduation,” said Col. John Cook, West Point’s chaplain, as he tried to relate the video’s lessons to the campus. “We have got to get beyond this whole issue of stigma.”

Officials said that the number of cadets seeking psychiatric help had increased in the past few years, and that some had sought counseling in recent weeks.

“We do see people who are coming in who say they’d like to talk about what’s happened with these cadets and about what’s at stake,” said Lt. Col. Lorenzo Luckie, acting director of the academy’s Center for Personal Development. “They say, ‘I have a friend I’m worried about,’ and ask what kind of action they should take.”

Some wonder whether putting such a sustained spotlight on the issue had its own risks. The 30-day training will be followed by a two-month program in which leaders will communicate with every cadet and staff member about suicide prevention.

“There’s always a chance, especially when you’re talking about young people in this age group, that you can overglamorize it, and in your efforts to prevent it you actually make the situation worse,” said Col. Michael A. Deaton, West Point’s top doctor. “You can also talk about it so much that they stop listening.”

While the rise in overall Army suicides — at least 128 soldiers killed themselves in 2008, the highest number in three decades — is widely seen as related to the stresses of the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the roots of the problem here are less clear.

Brig. Gen. Michael Linnington, who oversees the cadets’ training, said he did not “think this has anything to do with the war in Iraq” but is more about pre-existing mental conditions “coupled with a tough academy that demands a lot from its people.”

But Colonel Cook, whose twin sons are third-year cadets here, noted that 66 West Point graduates had died in the wars since 9/11; he has presided over some of their funerals on campus.

“These young men and women know that they are going to deploy,” he said. “I don’t want to say they’re scared, but they know what they’re dealing with.”

The grim toll began last year when a systems engineering professor killed himself in early June. Later that month, an administrative noncommissioned officer committed suicide. Then, on Dec. 8, Alfred Fox, a junior, checked into a motel off campus and killed himself by inhaling helium from a tank as he slept.

“I actually knew him,” said Cristin Browne, a senior who serves as the public affairs officer for the Corps of Cadets. “I stood next to him in formation. He was normal. We’d joke around about cadet things.”

When cadets returned to campus for the spring semester, they learned that a freshman, Gordon Fein, had turned a gun on himself Jan. 2 while at home.

That was followed by two “gestures,” as West Point officials call them, because they were seemingly more cries for help than serious efforts at suicide. On Jan. 30, the Pentagon dispatched three officials to the campus to study the individual cases, as well as West Point’s suicide-prevention programs and counseling services. They ruled out “suicide contagion,” in which one case inspires another. None of the four suicide victims had ever been deployed to a combat zone, and all four had seen “somebody professionally at least once,” Colonel Cook said.

“Each one was very different, and there was no connection between them,” Colonel Cook said.

Before this month, West Point presented suicide-prevention information twice a year to cadets and once a year to staff. But as one cadet, Christina Quimby of Memphis, pointed out, “It’s a mass briefing, so you’re not going to be able to get through to every single person.”

The new training will unfold in small groups, requiring more focus.

Staff Sgt. Courtnee Torres, a military policewoman, who returned from her second tour in Iraq in July and is in charge of West Point’s traffic section, said she was confounded by the suicides on campus but encouraged that the Army was confronting the problem.

Comparing life at West Point with the war in Iraq, Ms. Torres said, “It’s hard for me to understand that it can be so bad when we’ve had so much worse.” While she was in Iraq, she said, another woman in her platoon took her own life.

But Matt Sinclair, a freshman, described West Point as a highly regimented place where cadets were judged on academic, physical and military development.

“People need to know that it’s not a normal college,” he said. “You’re going to be stressed. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming. If you have family problems, and it’s really bothering you, West Point is not the best place to try to resolve them.”