Former Schofield Barracks soldier Andrew O’Brien got a second chance when he tried to kill himself in 2010 by gobbling down a handful of pills.
He realized he had made a mistake as he felt his life slip away, called 911 and possibly is alive today because of it.
Hawaii-born Air Force Staff Sgt. Brandon Kekoamanaokeakuakapulani Stagner, known a little more simply as "Koa" to his family here, was not so lucky.
Stagner killed himself in 2008 at his off-base home near Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska.
The 1994 Castle High School graduate stayed one step ahead of death on deployments to Saudi Arabia, Greece and Iraq, but the horrors of war brought nightmares, flashbacks and, eventually, a self-inflicted gunshot.
Both men sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder, and both apparently found none, adding to the tragedy of a growing number of suicides and attempts within the military.
Although the Pentagon has agonized over the losses, created the Defense Suicide Prevention Office and put in place nearly 900 suicide prevention initiatives, the deaths have increased.
The Army had 324 potential suicides in 2012 — the highest annual total on record.
Army suicides in Hawaii have fluctuated but generally crept upward as well. There were seven in 2012, with one of those under review as a possible accidental death, according to U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter. There have been none so far in 2013, the command said.
Those numbers don’t include overseas deaths in places like Afghanistan, where it’s not uncommon to have at least one suicide per major deployment.
Military leaders had no explanation for the suicide trend several years ago and still don’t now — although there is some belief that greater awareness could lead to a reversal.
"The trends are not going in the direction that we want them to — they haven’t been for some time," Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III told The Associated Press in March.
Austin, who was then stepping down as Army vice chief of staff, said awareness has improved. "There is more energy. I am optimistic that the trends are going to turn around, but it’s going to take more time."
Over the past decade, the national suicide rate has increased for the general U.S. population as well as for the military, Jacqueline Garrick, acting director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told a congressional committee in March.
The suicide rate among the armed forces rose from 10.3 suicides per 100,000 service members in 2001 to 18.3 suicides in 2009, Garrick said. "This issue is complex and the challenges are great," she said.
Ishmael Stagner II, whose son, Koa, killed himself at the age of 32, said the military is doing a much better job of dealing with PTSD and suicide now than it did when his son was having problems.
Stagner, who lives in Kaneohe, has a professional perspective as well as a personal one: He is a counselor for those struggling with grief, military suicide and substance abuse, and has been a psychology professor for more than 30 years. He is a counselor with the Prevent Suicide Hawaii Task Force.
At the time of his son’s death in 2008, the government’s attitude toward combat stress was indifference, he maintains.
"Their attitude was, frankly, ‘It’s war,’" he said.
Stagner contends that indifference started to turn around with the election of President Barack Obama and appointment of retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, a Kauai native, as secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Stagner said his son, who was part of Air Force security forces and was involved in special operations, had to pull dead Air Force personnel from an eight-story military housing structure that was blown up in Saudi Arabia in 1996. The Khobar Towers bombing killed 19.
He also had to pull injured buddies out of a Humvee that was hit by a roadside bomb, his father said.
And he had his share of close calls. A restaurant in Greece that he visited was bombed a couple of hours later; he also barely missed a suicide bomb attack on a mess tent in Iraq.
After three deployments to Iraq, the airman was having nightmares and flashbacks. "He would call us in the middle of the night, and all he would want to do is talk," Stagner said. "He would call and talk to his mom, he would cry, all kinds of stuff."
He urged his son to get immediate help.
"He was complaining that he had PTSD, and they said, ‘No, what you’ve got is insomnia,’ so they were treating his symptoms but they weren’t treating the cause," Stagner said.
On another visit a therapist told Staff Sgt. Stagner again that he didn’t have PTSD. This time he was told he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and was given antidepressants, the father said.
On the outside the staff sergeant was the "Happy Hawaiian," whose local-style barbecues were always popular. On the inside he was battling demons.
In Iraq the airman slept with his weapon, and back home in Alaska he took to keeping a pistol under his pillow, Stagner said.
The final straw may have been that he was having financial problems — something his parents found out later — and couldn’t handle them, he said.
The father in him was devastated and angry "because I’d been trying to get help for him," Stagner said. "But you know, you are 7,000 miles away and this wasn’t supposed to happen."
His mental health professional side sees the detrimental effects of multiple combat deployments and the problems of reintegrating into society that come along with that.
"The problem is you have a whole generation now of young people who are going to have that same problem," he said.
