In recent years, many people have seen the references to #22ADAY circulate on social media or even taken part in the “22 Pushup Challenge” to raise awareness of veteran suicide rates. While the accuracy of the number is in question — it very well may be higher, depending on the study you read — the campaign has resonated with many.
Regardless of the number, as director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office (DSPO), Sandra “Liz” Clark ’99 wants people to remember one thing:
“It’s not just a number. Each suicide number is a person. It is a person that died by suicide. It is a family that has lost somebody. It is a peer, a friend, a colleague, a unit.”
It’s that focus on humanizing the statistics of service member and veteran suicide and on fostering and nurturing human connection — something Clark learned through her own volunteer work on a crisis hotline — that has inspired her strategic, comprehensive, policy-based approach to suicide prevention during her career.
Clark knows firsthand what it’s like to be a member of the military. She grew up in a military family and was commissioned into the U.S. Army after graduating from the Hill as part of the Green Terror Battalion.
The availability of an ROTC program was non-negotiable for her in her college search, and McDaniel rose to the top of her list, which pleased her grandfather, Harry C. Schreck ’50. But she also created an extended family on the Hill with ties that have lasted decades.
“McDaniel had all the things I was looking for — ROTC, lacrosse, cross country — on the small campus I desired,” Clark says. “I knew that I was going to need to feel more connected, so the small student-to-faculty ratio was what really drove me.”
Early on in her first year, Clark found that connection with Barbara Horneff ’84, who was the associate dean of first-year students.
“Barb kind of wrapped her arms around me,” Clark says. “She really helped me with that transition from being in high school to college. The support system that you have on the Hill — and the fact that if you ever meet anybody anywhere who has gone to McDaniel, you have an immediate connection — I just don’t think that’s something you have at other schools. It absolutely changed my life.”
Initially, Clark enrolled thinking she was going to study Physical Education, but Debra Lemke’s Intro to Sociology changed the course of her life. She fell in love with the subject and declared it as her major. It paved the way for her master’s degree in Human Resources Management and her Doctor of Education in Leadership and Learning in Organizations.
While she did play lacrosse her first year, in time, ROTC and Phi Sigma Sigma became the most important parts of her educational experience. “ROTC was really my second home. Colonel Karen Doyle, now Helmeyer, was a fantastic female mentor to me,” she says. “I also did the Ranger Challenge and all the clubs that came along with ROTC. So, I had that and my Phi Sig sisters, who opened my world to other majors and events. They expanded my knowledge and awareness of populations and life experiences that differed from mine, which has been critical in my career.”
Though ROTC was a given for her even before her first step on the Hill, Clark’s career as an active-duty military member came with some challenges.
She was commissioned into the Army and stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, in the third infantry division. She was a platoon leader, maintenance shop officer, and battalion S-1 (personnel officer) for over 1,200 soldiers.
“My love for people is super strong, and I’ve always wanted to take care of them,” she says about her role as S-1 handling all personnel administration, laying the foundation for her passion for human resources and leadership.
Then, as for so many people, 9/11 changed everything.
“At the time, I was married, and we were dual military,” she says. “We knew we were going to be deployed to Iraq. Our nation’s response to 9/11 very much changed how the Army deployed and responded in those first couple years. Then, right before my spouse was deployed, I became pregnant with my first child.”
Clark became the rear detachment commander (RDC) during that deployment, meaning she was responsible for the personnel and equipment remaining at Fort Stewart during their unit’s deployment. With the rank of RDC carrying heavy family readiness responsibilities, Clark recalls that it was a challenge being pregnant herself and having to support many other pregnant military spouses while their partners were deployed.
“I spent my four years at Fort Stewart and then made the difficult decision to get out of the active Army because of deployments, our growing family, and being dual military,” Clark says. To ensure her children remained with a parent, especially so young, she decided to leave the active Army and care for her family while searching for a career stateside.
“I found a home at the Pentagon, literally by calling around to different offices,” she says. “I asked offices if anyone had work for a young captain, and I found a home at Army G-1, which was the headquarters staff where we developed mobilization policy and were responsible for mobilizing reservists to support Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.”
After fulfilling her commitment, she found a full-time position in 2006 with the National Guard Bureau as a section chief with the mobilization policy, supporting the 54 states and territories in mobilization and support for Operation Iraqi Freedom and then moving into Afghanistan.
In 2008, Clark made another move that had a profound effect on her sense of identity. Her new role: government civilian. “I really struggled with my transition,” she says. “I didn’t experience a mental health crisis, but I absolutely experienced an identity crisis.”
Clark points out that for active-duty military members, their life story is on their uniform. “Everywhere you walk, they know if you’ve gone to airborne school, they know if you have a combat infantry badge, if you’ve gone to air assault school,” she says. “Your rank, your branch … you’re a walking history, a walking resume. In the military, you have your 20-year plan. I knew these were the schools and the assignments I had to do. I had a roadmap.”
Once she stepped out of that uniform for good, she struggled with loneliness, purpose, and direction. “I was not a proud veteran,” she admits. “And that’s an experience a lot of female veterans have. But I felt like an imposter. I wondered, ‘What am I supposed to do? Who am I? How am I feeling connected?’”
Where Clark found that connection was as a volunteer crisis worker at PRS CrisisLink, a 24/7 crisis and suicide prevention hotline, textline, and chatline answering the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, now known as 988.
“Very quickly, it changed my life. I was having an opportunity to really listen to somebody and be with somebody on, often, the absolute worst day of their entire life,” Clark says. “I had the honor and privilege to be on the other end of that phone call. Every single interaction — every call, every text, every chat — that I’ve ever done through CrisisLink has changed me as a human being.”
That was when Clark realized the value and life-saving importance of human connection. When she was in the Army, she had to be solution-focused. But she learned that when people call a crisis hotline, they’re usually not looking for someone to solve their problem.
“They want you to listen to them. They want you to be empathetic,” she says. “They need someone to care about their suffering without judgment and they also want to feel empowered, to have choices, to find tangible and emotional support resources.”
Her work with CrisisLink formed the foundation of her advanced degrees. For her master’s degree in Human Resources Management at Georgetown University, Clark’s capstone project involved development of a volunteer competency framework for volunteer crisis workers. Much of that has since been adopted in crisis call centers across the country. Then, during her doctorate program at Vanderbilt University, she studied how to prevent compassion fatigue for those who work in suicide prevention and crisis prevention.
With all this experience, Clark found herself wanting to find a new home in the Defense Suicide Prevention Office. In 2015, she approached the new director and told her, “I want to work at DSPO, and this is what I can do for you: I know policy, so I can tackle suicide prevention from a very different perspective.”
Clark’s perspective? “If we can make work a better place to be, we’re going to reduce suicides.”
It was an opportunity for her to take her education and background in human resources, organizational development, and crisis response, and apply it to suicide prevention.
“It wouldn’t be just about the clinical side, but the human connection side,” Clark says. “So, I came in and developed the first policy for DSPO and looked at rebuilding governance structures.”
What that looked like was determining how they could partner and collaborate with the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard.
“They’re the ones that are actually instituting the programs and the efforts to save the lives of soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and guardians — and the lives of their families,” Clark says. “I developed that strategy, which doesn’t just apply to service members who live on base. We know that over 70% of service members live off the base installation, so we need to make sure that we have community-based efforts.”
Clark and her team are taking a comprehensive look at the underrepresented populations within the armed forces, what the barriers to access are (and how telehealth may be able to address them), and predictors of suicide.
“When you look up the predictors for suicide, relationships and finances are your two top things,” she says. “If we just put resources to mental health, we’re not going to make a dent in suicide rates. We have to take a public health approach: What is happening with your finances? Are you feeling satisfied and valued in your job? Are you feeling connected with your leader, your family, and your community?”
Clark is also looking at the ways the COVID-19 pandemic presented different challenges for the younger generations that will soon be enlisting — some of whom are likely current students on the Hill.
“To address suicide prevention, which ultimately equates to death prevention, we need to focus on making life worth living,” Clark says. “Focusing solely on ending suicide emphasizes only preventing a behavior, not reducing human suffering. We change this if we make life worth living — and that includes in school or in the workplace, since that’s where we spend the majority of our lives — we’re going to make people feel more connected and more stable.”
She points out that these prevention efforts can also have positive effects on substance misuse and abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and toxic relationships and work environments.
“How can we just be more compassionate to each other? Sometimes just saying to somebody, ‘You matter to me, and I appreciate you in my life,’ can be so powerful,” Clark says. “It seems simple, but it can change or save someone’s life.
“You know, we go through our entire life and career trying to figure out what we want to achieve, and what kind of impact we want to make. We spend time, resources, and energy on education and development. I am so fortunate I have found a way to apply what I learned on the Hill, and in all my academic and personal pursuits, to have a meaningful contribution toward suicide prevention. And I don’t just want to prevent death; I want to make life worth living.”