Courtesy of good.is
In the light of increasing suicides by veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Facebook today announced new military crisis content, developed in partnership with Blue Star Families and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
. Because Facebook is so widely used, it is in the unique position to help Veterans. A survey conducted by Blue Star Families found that nearly 8% of veterans and 10% of military family members have contemplated suicide and of those 8%, 86% use Facebook on a daily basis.
Face book already features a suicide tool. All you have to do is report a post, File a report, then choose why you are filing a report. If it is about violent content with suicidal behavior, then it will take you to a page that lets you either contact the person directly, or it gives you a list of suicide numbers based on what country the person lives in.
Now, the system has the ability to identify military personnel and their families and direct their friends to information from the Veterans Crisis Line when they report content as harmful or suicidal.
Now that we can more actively combat suicide, we need to try to find out why so many veterans want to commit suicide. “If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Timesin 2011, “because we don’t know what it is.”
Cover photo courtesy of the US Army Facebook page