Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 (2013)

Apparently, as of 2013, there have been more self-inflicted fatalities at the hands of American soldiers at home than there have been at the hands of their enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan thus far combined. Some twenty-two people per day are taking their own lives and so Uncle Sam has dedicated 250 counsellors at the Department for Veteran Affairs to provide a Samaritan-like lifeline for those troubled souls and their families. The staff are trained to help with the peculiar mental health issues faced by those ageing between 20-50 who have found themselves traumatised by the effects of their deployments. Hollywood has had a go, over the years, at dramatising just how difficult it can be for soldiers, sailors and marines to fit back into family and society after having lived on their nerves for months at a time in the far fung corners of the world, but this takes a camera to overlook a series of emotionally-charged telephone conversations that are real. We don't hear the voices doing the calling, but we do get a sense of just how the teamwork provides an essential level of support and care for callers whose guns can be heard clicking down the line, or who have just swallowed a couple of dozen pills. These responders try a variety of subtle tactics to identify their callers and to get the emergency services to them where possible, and by the end of this half-hour observation we are left in no doubt that their work is hugely valuable but that also there appears to be little post-combat aftercare for these men and women - some of whom are still actually serving. With a military the size of the USA, keeping track on it's staff past and present is always going to be an Herculean effort, but with these professionals here bouncing from call to call fairly regularly, one has to come away thinking that there does need to be more done to assist those whose vulnerabilties and perhaps even sense of shame make asking for help as hard as serving abroad.