The Army is ramping up efforts to stave off Soldier suicide with a new Shoulder to Shoulder suicide awareness video, its third in the last three years. 

Footage for the new 15-minute video was shot on Joint Base Lewis-McChord from Jan. 19 to 21 and earlier at Fort Riley, Kans. The first Shoulder to Shoulder video, No Soldier Stands Alone, released in 2008, aimed to emphasize the strength of the Army family. The second production, entitled I Will Never Quit on Life, was released last summer and offered first-hand accounts of Soldiers who had attempted suicide.  

The new effort is focused on resiliency. "Everybody goes through pain, stressors and difficult situations, and everybody reacts differently," said Army Suicide Prevention Program Manager Walter Morales, who was on JBLM to oversee production. "So what we want to do is to put a face on resiliency. It's very abstract right now."

Prior to filming, Morales conducted focus groups comprised of junior noncommissioned officers, junior and senior officers, Department of Defense civilians and family members to help determine what to include. "We have to attend to the needs of the person who is going to watch the video," Morales said. "Soldiers, DA civilian and family members. We are one team ... We have to know what issues affect them."

Participants for the video were identified with the help of local suicide prevention program managers and were interviewed "to relate to us that dark side when they were in that hole, in that fog," Morales said. "It could be that they were looking at suicide, or a close family member committed suicide. Maybe they were using drugs, but they were in that fog. What we wanted to get from them was how they got out of the fog. And this is the face of resiliency."

More than 50 individuals related their stories, and hundreds of hours of interviews will be pared down for the 15-minute video, which should be released by August.

For more information, visit www.preventsuicide.army.mil or www.behavioralhealth.army.mil.