And with these two apparent suicides, and other soldiers who have expression suicidal ideations, the BDF is at, what Burns referred to, a crisis point. He explained that following Private Miguel's suicide, they have been upgrading their protocols and have even established a Suicide Prevention Handbook, which Burns worked on closely. He also noted that the force is working to get in-house psychologists and other specialists that they would normally rely on the Ministry of Health to provide.
Lt. Col. Jermaine Burns, Chief of Staff, B.D.F.
"Once somebody commits suicide within your, if it's an organization. You have what you would call copy cats, so if somebody was contemplating it, its called suicide ideation. The person of that ideation is enforced when somebody else starts with the committing of that suicide and so since Micha, we've had and I'm sure you've seen this on social media - a couple guys either saying that they're tired of living and by saying that, according to the Colombian Rating Suicide Scale, just saying it is near an attempt. In a group of about fifty, we had at least fifteen to sixteen that were near the edge of ideation. So that raised an alarm for us. We ask for volunteers to sit with the counsellor. We've gotten where we've had 2-3 incidents since Micha's passing that came near attempt or attempt and we have had to restrict those folks to barracks."
"If you have in an organization of two thousand, and you have five to ten people that have suicide ideation you have a crisis. I'm not sure of the percentage, but 2,000 and you have about 10-15 my Canadian and UK counterparts told me, you have a crisis on your hands. Because of the suicide of Private Micha the other day, it provoked us to look into trying to either temporary hire or hire permanently. Those specialities that we don't have within the force, I was the one who actually put together the paper, is now on our minister's desk and we are awaiting his advice, his approval."
