Interactive movies employed as Army stresses suicide prevention

Interactive movies employed as Army stresses suicide prevention
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, March 3, 2009

VILSECK, Germany — Interactive movies — which allow the audience to make decisions on behalf of a character at risk of suicide or a noncommissioned officer trying to help — are part of a suicide prevention program running Armywide this month.

The movies were screened for groups of soldiers and civilians at Vilseck on Monday as part of a suicide prevention stand down.

Over the next two weeks, every soldier in the Army will receive two hours of suicide prevention training in response to four years of rising suicide rates amongst soldiers. According to the Army, there were 128 confirmed suicides last year — and 15 more probable suicides still being investigated, up from 115 in 2007.

One of the videos focuses on a young specialist deployed to Iraq who is dumped by his girlfriend back home. The audience watches the soldier as he tries in vain to reach his girlfriend on the telephone, then finds out she is cheating with a guy who steals all the soldier’s money from his online bank account.

Every few minutes, the video pauses and gives the audience various choices, mostly to do with talking to buddies or the chain of command about the problems or keeping things bottled up.

Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61082