I think one of our concerns always with the issue of deployment and that tight relationship being made between deployment and suicide is that it makes it possible. We always fear that those who commit suicide and never deployed get lost in that picture. It's an over-simplistic picture, because for sure there are the MPTSRs that Elizabeth talks about. I did MPTSRs when I was in the military, and we certainly did them for people who had never deployed but who committed suicide for a number of reasons, some of which we didn't always understand. It's important to remember that there are many factors leading that person onto that suicidal pathway. Deployment may be one of them, but not necessarily.
On March 20th, 2017. See this statement in context.