What is your definition of a public health epidemic?

Do you believe there's a shortage of mental health counselors in the military?

What additional metrics regarding attempted suicides are needed in order to tailor specific suicide prevention strategies to populations at risk in DOD?

I look forward to learning about what you're trying to do to control this problem, and I appreciate the hearing.

I think what we have is a resource problem, but, more than anything else, we have a holdover of stigma.

The Army's suicide rate has doubled from 2004 to now.

This is one subcommittee, I think, that has really gotten the spirit of what we're all about here and tried to be as nonpartisan as possible.

Okay. Major General Rubenstein and Brigadier General Sutton, is that disturbing?

I think it's a cumulative effect of deployments that run from 12 months to 15 months.

But do we, as a matter of routine, inform the military, 'You have a problem here'?

Major General Rubenstein, how do you track whether or not a soldier attains that care?

That's the point. I mean that is an astonishing number, to me, if you had 780 contacts last year.

Overall, my goal in the next 6 months is due diligence and regimented enforcement of all institutional processes that exist to take care of soldiers with an ultimate goal being significant reduction in the number of suicides.

From the 30,000-foot level here, for the 4-year period I just described, Air Force deployments have not come down.

I believe that the military has made progress on many fronts in confronting the issue of stigma.

I know this is hard, but that's the most overwhelming evidence I've heard that there is a real stigma problem here.

the number of suicides by members of the Reserves is significantly less than for the Active component.

I hope that this hearing will lead us to a better understanding of the factors that military organizations and families can positively influence.