A plan to help veterans from 'the first minute' they leave the service

The occasion of Chris Carter’s 23rd birthday in 2015 brought together his parents, friends, and fellow soldiers in sorrow rather than celebration. An Army Ranger who served four combat tours in Afghanistan, he had died by suicide two weeks earlier, his mind trapped within a distant war that trailed him home. The mourners gathered for his funeral at a church outside St. Louis, less than a mile from the high school where he had graduated five years earlier, when his future seemed incandescent and infinite.

During Mr. Carter’s first tour in 2011, he lost a close friend in a bomb explosion and glimpsed the broken bodies of another soldier and an Afghan interpreter killed in the blast. He had little time to grieve. The Army deployed the Rangers – elite special operations units – for four-month tours during which the furious mission tempo seldom ebbed. Carter’s platoon endured an unrelenting cycle of raids and firefights, adrenaline and carnage.

His first suicide attempt followed his final deployment in 2014. After learning the news, his mother,