Combating Stress

Field manuals, psychological tests, yoga. Here’s how the army is fighting stress, a killer of morale and men.

PICTURE SPEAK

SILENT KILLER: Over 100 soldiers commit suicide every year A field manual has been widely distributed to troops deployed in CI operations

The army is now shooting stress with a raft of hard and soft measures. In the past three months, two soldiers have been given the death penalty for killing their senior officers. The army has introduced several soft measures like yoga lessons and a liberal leave policy to reduce instances of suicides and fratricides. From December, the army will also try and weed out potential soldier recruits with personality disorders. Tests designed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will be given to soldiers at recruitment centres all over the country. “They will help us spot recruits with angular and abrasive behaviour,” says Dr W. Selvamurthy, Chief Controller, Research and Development, DRDO.

DO’S	DON’T
Be alert to suicidal tendencies among men. Continue interaction with them. Reduce distance that authority creates and hear out problems of your men Promote interpersonal relations and a lively environment within the unit Provide personal help to those susceptible until professional help is available Enquire about their personal well being and that of their family members from time to time	Assume a soldier cannot commit suicide. Act shocked if a person admits suicidal intent Debate morality of self-destruction or talk about how it might hurt others Underestimate the gravity of the situation or ignore symptoms Exert continuous pressure to perform, use physical punishment, humiliate troops in front of others or use abusive language

Earlier administered only to officer recruits, time-bound tests will consist of 11 pictures and 60 words in thematic apperception, word association and situation reaction tests. Responses in these tests will help examiners determine personality of soldiers. Recruits will be asked to narrate a story around a picture of a motor accident projected on screen, where psychologists say they will identify one of the characters in the story. Or they could be asked to list all the feelings associated with a word like “love”.

The army recently began distributing field manuals on suicides and fratricides, for use by officers and men in the north and North-east. The pocket-sized booklets, in English for officers and Hindi for soldiers, inform soldiers about stress symptoms and ways to prevent outbreaks of violence. The manuals are based on the results of a 50-day study conducted by the Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR) on 2,000 soldiers deployed in the north and North-east and submitted to the MoD last month.

The army argues that suicide rates among its men—nine cases per 1,00,000—are far lower than the national average—12 per 1,00,000 or even the combat deployed US Army—18 per 100,000 soldiers. Religious teachers, JCOs of Army Education Corps and regimental medical officers have been identified as psychological health mentors at the unit level. As the majority of suicides occur after soldiers return from leave, health mentors have been tasked with identifying stress among returning soldiers. It now remains to be seen if these measures can convince soldiers not to reach for their loaded rifles when they’re stressed out.

-By Sandeep Unnithan

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