Russell Carr

Posts about war zone psychiatry, mental health tips, and fiction. I'm a retired Navy psychiatrist documenting my journey from PTSD to publishing my first novel.

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

Like many psychiatrists, I’ve talked people out of killing themselves. I’ve talked them away from windows and loaded pistols.

I’ve also lost patients to suicide.

People who consider killing themselves experience terrible isolation and hopelessness.

Research says that, and I’ve felt it myself.

I’m ashamed I’ve been suicidal. I have a beautiful family and a good life and so many reasons to live. It would be easier to never talk about it, but that won’t help others and won’t lessen the stigma.

In 2008–2009, I spent six months in Mosul, Iraq, with the U.S. Army. My work with soldiers there was the most rewarding in my career. Colleagues and I became friends, but I spent much of the time lonely and wanting to be back home.

Three months into that deployment, one of my patients killed himself. It devastated me. I’ve written about it, and will write more. I sometimes think of him and how I believed then I’d failed him. For my remaining three months in Iraq, I second-guessed myself and felt I’d let my new teammates down.

What made my guilt worse was that the Army released me a week early to return to the States and accept a national award. After my patient’s suicide, I felt I didn’t deserve it.

Leaving my new friends and team and my patients in Iraq wasn’t easy, but I wanted to see my family again.

Such mixed, even confusing, emotions are typical at the end of military deployments.

When I returned home, I hugged and kissed my wife and our four-year-old son, but my head remained back in Iraq. With no time to relax and reconnect, my family and I left the east coast for Tucson, where I’d receive the award.

Except for the tall Saguaro cacti everywhere, the desert outside Tucson reminded me of Iraq: the bare, blue mountains in the distance, the dry heat. I wondered about soldiers I’d treated who remained there. I thought of my dead patient who didn’t return home alive to his family.

In discussions after accepting the award, I told civilian psychiatrists that I felt strange and out of place, not wearing body armor and not carrying a 9mm with me everywhere. Some were in awe and asked romanticized questions. I got frustrated because they didn’t get it.

I distanced myself emotionally. My guilt intensified because my son and wife felt joy in my presence while I remained indifferent to them. I didn’t feel the day-to-day connections we shared before the deployment or the pain of missing them while I was in Iraq. Even though I knew intellectually that this is a common experience and passes, I couldn’t take it.

I couldn’t return to my team or friends in Iraq or reconnect with my family. I felt hopeless and became suicidal.

I wanted out. I was edgy and irritated, bad feelings to mix with suicidal thoughts. Killing myself wasn’t about living or dying, but about no longer feeling so disconnected and out of place.

I didn’t tell anyone. Luckily, I no longer carried around my 9mm from Iraq. I might have done something stupid, something many others have sadly done.

Part of me wanted to live. Knowing that my wife and son needed me was what saved me.

On the last night of the conference, our son was too young to know prickles covered a small cactus he liked. He grabbed it and immediately started crying. My wife held and soothed him, and I pulled the spines out of his tiny hand. At that moment, I felt love for him and knew I didn’t want to leave them.

It’s the love of other people that can keep us from killing ourselves. I’m fortunate to have that.

You’ve known people who’ve had thoughts of suicide, even if they never told you. If they share their pain, show them you care. Connect with them. That’s a large part of what I do as a psychiatrist. Of course, you can also encourage them to seek professional help or you can call 911 if the person is intent or about to do it.

Being there for the person, as another suffering human being, is a start.
#Military #MentalHealthMatters

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

It’s been six years since I retired from the Navy. I still have a recurring dream where I’m trying to retire from it but I can’t find the one person who has my retirement paperwork. I search everywhere at Walter Reed and wake up out of breath. I never find her.
#Veterans

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@donwinslow The lunatics are running the asylum.

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@DanCrenshawTX Republicans can never call themselves fiscally responsible again

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@MoscowTimes Make Russia Great Again!

The mind virus is spreading

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@JoyceCarolOates I was just at The Kennedy Center last night to see a jazz so in one of its smaller venues. It's a vibrant, magnificent center for the arts. It will soon become a professional wrestling venue.

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

A few months after I returned from Iraq, a discussion with a mentor about my patient's suicide overwhelmed me so much that it literally killed part of me.

A Discussion Left me Partially Blind, Part 1 https://t.co/M9PMFwlkAk

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

While still having thoughts of suicide, I became the attending psychiatrist for the inpatient ward at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. My own feelings helped me understand my patients better, and perhaps helping them helped save me. The nurses saved all of us.
#Nursing #Military #MentalHealth

From Iraq to a Psych Ward https://t.co/0PRjNb5Yq4

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

At a jazz show with my son this Christmas, I reflected on the what led to me being in Iraq as part of an occupation. I hope he doesn't make the same mistakes I did.

Christmas Then and Now https://t.co/aIlh4sDzRg

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@JoyceCarolOates Terrible, malpractice

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@joncoopertweets I’d warn the fish.

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@JoyceCarolOates Awesome news! Well-deserved!!

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

This was the toughest assignment the Navy ever gave me. I'm still struggling with the memories of it almost twenty years later.
#Military #Warzone #Veterans

The Farewell Video https://t.co/VsEEXAkXNk

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@7Veritas4 I hope you're tweeting from Canada! Stay safe

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@UkrReview As VP Harris said, Putin will eat Trump for lunch.

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

In my first year as the doctor on a Navy ship, I learned the hard way how medicine can become privileged and politicized in a community.
#medicine #Military #Navy

My First Weeks on the SEATTLE, Part 2 https://t.co/mqxCOr1g0H

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

I never expected to find blatant racism on a Navy ship in 2000, and before I knew it, I was on a side I never wanted to be on:
#Navy #Veteran #endracism

First Weeks on the USS SEATTLE (AOE-3) https://t.co/C1KQDZPJRW

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@LucVerbeurgt @UkrReview That’s just dumb. Russia’s military is spent

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

John McCain and I didn’t always agree, but he understood that some values transcended parties. He knew that if we got in the habit of bending the truth to suit political expediency or party orthodoxy, our democracy will not work.

John McCain had character. That’s what I think about so much these days because it’s so different from what we see out of the Republican nominee.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Child: What’s your favorite farm animal?

Trump: If we go with Kamala, you won't have any cows anymore. You will not have any cows anymore

(???)

[Russell Carr @russellcarrmd]

@JoyceCarolOates I read books for them to destroy me and turn my world upside down. That's the greatest thing about them.