In the wake of the dramatic Cybertruck suicide in Las Vegas by a highly decorated Army soldier from Colorado, and a terror attack by a veteran in New Orleans, it’s fair to ask whether the military is adequately monitoring the mental well-being of its soldiers.

Friends of Matthew Livelsberger’s said they saw signs of declining mental health in recent years, and emails sent before his death — including claims about Chinese drones powered by antigravity technology, and that he was being followed — certainly suggest he was suffering from a mental-health episode and paranoia.

Yet a former Army psychiatrist I spoke to assured me that the military has made an enormous effort to address the mental well-being of its soldiers in recent years and screen for potentially extreme behavior.

“The Army and the entire DoD have exponentially increased screening for mental health disorders since I first enlisted (1989),” said Dr. Charles “Chuck” Weber, a former Army psychiatrist and founder of the Family Care Center in Colorado Springs.

“They have progressed to implementing comprehensive measures before and after deployments, as well as more frequent assessments. The introduction of embedded behavioral health programs, initially at Fort Carson and now standardized across the DoD, has further enhanced access to mental health services.”

Another psychiatrist familiar with special ops soldiers like Livelsberger said the care for U.S. Army Special Forces is especially robust.

“I really feel like access to mental health services for Special Forces is really good,” he said. “They’ve got their own embedded behavioral health team. They’ve got their own psychiatrist, their own counselors. Special Forces has their own special pot of money that they get from donors and they can tap into a foundation that will send these guys to residential treatment in places like Utah and Texas. I feel like when they raise their hand, their access is good.”

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Yet approximately 60% of military personnel who experience mental health problems do not seek help, according to recent military studies, mainly because of the stigma associated with mental illness.

“The challenge is with getting them to move beyond stigma,” said the psychiatrist. “You’ve probably got a subculture within Special Forces who simply don’t subscribe to the benefits of mental health treatment. So there there’s always that dynamic.”

Weber agreed with that assessment. “Personal stigma is the number one barrier to seeking mental health care, especially in fields that value stoic approaches to mental health struggles.”

“Special Forces operators are not necessarily at higher risk of mental health intrinsically,” Weber noted. “However, they are exposed to higher levels of combat, traumatic brain injuries, deployments and isolation, all major factors that compound mental disorders.” Still, he felt like “the military has made a tremendous positive change in reducing stigma, increasing access to behavioral health care and increasing staff and resources.”

In fact, an Army spokesperson confirmed that Livelsberger was using the U.S Special Operation Command’s Preservation of the Force and Family program that provides mental health care to soldiers. But he also said Livelsberger “did not display any concerning behaviors.”

His ex-girlfriend said just the opposite, that he had displayed many concerning behaviors in recent years. Alicia Arritt, an Army nurse, told our reporter Carol McKinley that Livelsberger’s behavior changed in 2019 after he returned from a tour in the Middle East with what she suspected was a traumatic brain injury. He became isolated. She believes that the depressive symptoms he showed went untreated because “it’s not acceptable to seek treatment when someone is in Special Forces.”

Clearly, the screening within the Force and Family program was inadequate, otherwise the Army wouldn’t have granted Livelsberger leave right before his death

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“I think you could write a probably a whole story on the inefficiencies of our screening programs,” the one psychiatrist told me. “We screen them at these three or four critical times during the ARFORGEN deployment cycle: pre-deployment, post-deployment. But the screening tools that we use were validated within primary care clinics where people were suffering and seeking help. We apply these screening tools to presumably healthy young men, hoping that if they’re having problems they’ll be honest in the way that they answer the questions, but they’re not always honest.”

A 2021 study by the Cost of War Project detailed stress factors particular to military life: “high exposure to trauma — mental, physical, moral, and sexual — stress and burnout, the influence of the military’s hegemonic masculine culture, continued access to guns, and the difficulty of reintegrating into civilian life.” The study concluded that since 9/11, four times as many service members and veterans have died by suicide as have perished in combat.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has publicly acknowledged that the Pentagon’s current mental health offerings — including a Defense Suicide Prevention Office established in 2011 — have proven insufficient.

Part of the problem is the military’s shortage of mental health workers and an increase in demand for care, which has forced troops to sometimes wait a month for appointments, according to a recent government report.

The Government Accountability Office found 43% of authorized behavioral health care jobs in the military’s Defense Health Agency were vacant as of January 2023.

In a story in today’s Gazette, military reporter Mary Shinn also reports that Special Forces Group commanders often direct their embedded mental health professionals to minimize conditions to ensure more soldiers can deploy.

So what’s the answer?

On Sep. 28, 2023, Austin released a memo directing urgent actions to address suicide and mental illness in the military community, building upon two years of significant work across the Department of Defense.

Following the secretary’s establishment of the Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee in 2022, the SPRIRC conducted internal reviews of 11 military installations consisting of 457 focus groups and interviews with 2,106 service members and 670 civilian staff. Guided by this review and existing research, the SPRIRC made 127 near- and long-term recommendations.

The campaign focuses on five lines of effort: Foster a Supportive Environment; Improve the Delivery of Mental Health Care; Address Stigma and Other Barriers to Care; Revise Suicide Prevention Training; and Promote a Culture of Lethal Means Safety.

Clearly, however, the campaign is still a work in progress, especially for non-active duty members looking for a lost sense of community.

“Transitioning out of the service is probably one of the most challenging things an individual could do,” retired Army Lt. Col. Sam Andrews told The Wall Street Journal. “We lose our sense of purpose, we lose our sense of tribe, we lose our sense of meaning.”

Colorado Springs veterans may be luckier than most in making that transition because they have access to an abundance of programs like Mt. Carmel, Mentally STRONG, Next Chapter and the Family Care Center started by Weber.

Every month, roughly 500 active-duty military members transition from service into civilian life in Colorado Springs.

Weber started the Family Care Center in Colorado Springs to specifically care for soldiers who have returned from war and gotten out of the military.

“The biggest gap I noticed with my 27 years in uniform was a focus on the family members and retirees/veterans,” Weber told me. “So, we started Family Care Center to address that need.”

“Family Care Center uses evidence-based treatments, thoughtful medication management and coordinated therapy while involving families and considering a patient’s spiritual well-being,” Weber said. “This holistic approach helps create positive, lasting improvements in the lives of our patients.”

That approach begs the question: Can the military do a better job of involving family members in its checks and balances on the mental health of active-duty soldiers? What if the Army knew what Livelsberger’s ex-girlfriend knew?

It’s one way the military might finally get serious about healing the invisible wounds of war.