Mitch, I have purposely kept away from writing about mental health in the military for several reasons. The major one is that, I believe, that the military has a unique culture and a unique command and control structure that does not correspond to the experience of most of the readers of this blog or the experience of most OHS professionals.

There is some overlap with those civilian organisations that mirror the military hierarchy and control structures, such as police and emergency services. Importantly the issues you mention have also been reported in these sectors over several years and throughout Australia. Suicides, mental illness, post-traumatic stress, bullying, harassment and other work-related problems have been investigated repeatedly by auditors-general, safety regulators and government agencies.

Changes and improvements have occurred as a result but one of the military values and cultural indicators is an approach to risk that is not the same as applied in non-military workplaces.

I understand that there is considerable attention given to building individual resilience in military training. I am critical of resilience training in most circumstances but less so for the military as soldiers have far less control over many of the places in which they work and so individual resilience and teamwork are often the best hazard control options available.

I am an advocate for OHS professionals to give more attention to work-related suicides and the social impacts and context. But I also try to apply OHS principles to this issue and the most difficult principle is to eliminate the risk or hazard. Soldiers can only eliminate the psychological risk by not joining the armed forces in the first place. The nature of the defence forces is that they face a level of risk that no one else faces and this unique requirement is addressed through gathering the best intelligence, having the best equipment and training for facing that risk and to train people to cope with that experience as much as they can. In effect, to do everything “as far as is reasonably practicable”.

But even with all of this preparation and support, some soldiers return psychologically damaged. The post-incident support for these soldiers is vital and, from the recent media reports, seems to have been inadequate. This needs to improve.

Thanks for taking me to task. There is an opportunity for a much longer and deeper discussion on this topic.

I like your article “Japanese depression contrasts the Western understanding of workplace mental health” but I have to disagree with you first sentence.

“Australian workplace mental health advocates often seem to shy away from discussions of suicide, perhaps because suicides are not a regular occurrences at work or because work-related suicide remains stigmatised.”

If you have listened to the news the last few days, the Defence Force have had 41 suicide this year, that is at least 5 a month. God only knows how many have tried to commit suicide and didn’t succeed.

Being a current serving member of the Australian Army with 40 years experience in both the Regular and Reserve Army. I noticed the condition that our Vietnam Veterans where like when they returned. I now see it in the young diggers that return from the conflicts which we are currently involved in.

It is about time that the Australian Government and the Public sit up and take notice of what is happening to our diggers. I know the culture is that the diggers will not say anything because of promotions and postings. This needs to be changed from the top down, if some of them read your article and take some points from the Japanese then things might change.

You are right we need to bring Workplace Mental Health and Suicides to the front so we can protect people better. if we send some of our specialist over to Japan to see how they have dealt with suicides then we might have a chance of saving some lives.

Thank you for a good article.