My husband and I collectively dedicated 37 years to the United States military. During that time, we both witnessed and experienced the loss of fellow brothers and sisters in arms. It’s bad enough to lose one of your own in battle, but it’s exponentially worse to lose one to suicide.

Between the two of us, we witnessed and knew a total of six suicides. In just over a year since my retirement, I know of one fellow veteran who couldn’t cope with life outside of the uniform and chose to end it prematurely. Unfortunately, the decades-long scourge of military and veteran suicide has yet to be adequately answered. Those of us who served in the last two decades know that the endless cycle of ineffective methods to curb this dark trend is a mere checkbox that does nothing to save the lives of those who have given so much.

A recent report commissioned by the Pentagon has some suggestions on possibly bringing down the suicide rate of those younger troops, but are these recommendations anything new? Are they even going to be effective? Let’s take a look.