Retired Two-Star Opens Up About Mental Health Crisis That Ended His Career

He is absolutely right about stigma and helping to abolish it. I have a different kind of depression and luckily got treatment as well. It is a part of who I am but doesn't define me. I treat it and live my life.

I'd rather have physical problems than mental

I have full faith, believing that the stigma will never go away. When there are SOOOOO many things that are broken, backwards, and covered up, when so much effort has to made toward developing a “perception” for the public and steering them away from knowing what going on inside, mental health issues are just one more thing that sweep under the rug. For the longest time, it has been my personal opinion that the mental health crisis and the suicide numbers plaguing the military, is something that they will always view as “self resolving”. It’s much easier to talk about “awareness” than it is to find a reason. Far too many times the DOD chooses to live a life of denial and make believe in order to keep the public’s trust. It’s much easier and cheaper to blame the individual than it is to “take the aircraft off line” and figure out why people are flying into the ground.