SEAL Team 6 member's suicide inspires new veterans' mental health effort

When the chain-link gate slid open on a military airfield in Virginia Beach, Va., spouses stood waiting for their husbands after yet another grueling deployment. Still clad in their camouflage uniforms, operators with SEAL Team 6 were reunited with their wives that night in the summer of 2009. Sydney Mulder came forward to embrace her husband, Bill, but immediately saw that something was wrong.

Back home, Bill and Sydney would usually sit down and talk about the deployment over a case of beer — but not this time. Bill, one of the country’s most decorated Navy SEALs, didn’t want to talk about it, and even told her he needed a break. The Navy found a position for him in San Antonio as a SEAL recruiter that would allow him to relax a bit. But he hated it — hated the job and hated being away from his teammates, and began to sink into alcohol abuse.

Team leader was a position Bill wanted to make, but alcoholism was affecting his performance on the job. “His lack of sleep was constant, the rage, these outbursts,” Sydney said, describing how he had changed. “Paranoia was a big one. His memory was starting to be affected, he was losing things all the time,” she said, attributing these behavior changesAt this point, leadership at SEAL Team 6 knew Bill was struggling, and found a position for him to ride out the rest of his time to retirement.

For Negley, the son of a psychologist, it had already been glaringly obvious that mental health was an issue in America’s covert operations community. “My guy who is about to get on a plane to go to Syria, who definitely has a drinking problem and his own issues, is sure as shit not going to walk into agency OMS [the CIA’s Office of Medical Services] and say, 'Let me tell you about my drinking problem,'” Negley said. “Zero percent chance that is going to happen.

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