Cultural norms on the Team: “Mission first,” “Never weak,” “Handle your own problems”. There is a saying out there that “The job suffers last.” Whatever else happens in your life, it had better not impact your job. If it doesn’t, then it’s your business; if it does, then it is everyone’s business. Weakness is not tolerated - it is despised. Despised probably isn’t a strong enough word. During selection/training, weakness goes hand-in-hand with quitting or poor job performance. No one wants to do someone else’s job or carry their load. Continued weakness or not shouldering your load is a one-way ticket out of the teams, with pain along the way. Self-reliance is a valued skill, along with problem solving. The expectation is of a member finding a way - in training, in combat, or elsewhere.
Our community is hyper-competitive. From the very first day of training, everything is a competition. “It pays to be a winner.” Everything, everything is a competition…pt; runs; swims; who gets what platoon; who deploys to what area; who gets what job in what platoon; who goes to what school; who gets selected to go on a particular operation in what capacity; who gets various (and limited) leadership roles; who gets what ranking among peers; who gets “one-off” opportunities…everything is a competition. And in a competitive environment, any weakness or mistake can be used against you - now or in the future. The way around that is to not make mistakes, to be better than everyone else in all arenas, to work harder to bend reality to your will, and to only show strength - you have to out-alpha the alphas.
Given that, we don’t seek treatment. The same guys that will ignore medical issues and minimize injury will certainly do the same with mental health. That delay will, a lot of the time, last until the member is no longer in the service. Because the job suffers last, everything else in the member’s life will degrade before work does. Personal lives will be a shredded mess, but in the Team Room, kill house, or on deployment, the member will be locked-on.
Post-service, there are a lot of guys that move away from the concentration areas where they were stationed. They no longer have teammates around them, the constant high energy ramp-up of a training and deployment cycle, or a “reason” for existing. These, plus chronic pain from injury can lead to isolation with disastrous results. Suicide is common-place - it isn’t a surprise to hear of “another one.”