Army Chaplain Leads Suicide Intervention Training

Chaplain (Major) Jonathan Landon, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait

Two friends met for lunch at the Starbucks on Camp Arifjan. One shared that she was taking college classes through the Education Center in the hopes of being accepted into a commissioning program and trained as an Army pharmacist. Unfortunately, because her grades had slipped, she had been rejected from the college back in the States, which she had hoped to enter upon redeployment, and her chance of being accepted in to the commissioning program was gone. As she shared about her anxiety and distress, her friend became concerned. “Are you having thoughts of suicide?” she asked. Reluctantly the Soldier admitted that she was. Fortunately her friend knew what to do, because…

This scene was actually a role-playing activity at an Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) workshop led by US Army chaplain Fr. Jonathan Landon and Mental Health NCO Sgt. First Class Regan Brown at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. A medical unit hosted the workshop and most of the participants were Army or Navy personnel in medical specialties or related fields.

In the past, the US Army has relied on knowledge-oriented suicide awareness training, built around relaying statistical information to help Soldiers appreciate the magnitude of the danger of suicide. In contrast, ASIST is skills-oriented, teaching people specific actions they can take to influence a person at risk of suicide to choose to live long enough to get help from a qualified, professional caregiver. ASIST is published by a Canadian company, LivingWorks Education Inc., and it is validated by nearly thirty years of study and experience to increase the willingness and capability of program graduates to intervene when they become aware of a person showing signs of suicidal thoughts and plans. LivingWorks recently announced that they had reached the milestone of 1,000,000 ASIST-trained caregivers, worldwide. The Army considers ASIST to be a crucial component of its overall strategy to reduce suicidal behavior among Soldiers, Families and DoD Civilians.

The Army values ASIST training so much that – effective 1 April 2010 – qualified ASIST trainers such as Chaplain Landon and SFC Brown will be able to add a code to their personnel records identifying them as Suicide Intervention Trainers. This will allow commands and human resource directorates to quickly identify and locate trainers when training is needed, and to consider this special qualification as well as the trainers’ primary military specialties when assigning them to units and installations.

The philosophy and objectives of suicide intervention training are strongly compatible with the Charismatic Episcopal Church’s pro-life stance. Among the CEC military chaplains there are five, qualified, ASIST Trainers, including one Master Trainer.

Fr. Jonathan Landon is an active duty Army chaplain currently serving as Operations Chaplain of US Army Central Command in Kuwait. He is Archdeacon to Archbishop Woodall, Archdiocese of the Armed Forces and Federal Chaplaincies and Director of the African College Education Fund, under the supervision of the International Development Agency. When his military duties permit, he serves as priest-in-residence at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Sharpsburg, GA. from →News Release