FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS — The Fort Leavenworth National Prayer Luncheon was observed April 3, 2025, at the Fort Leavenworth Frontier Conference Center with a buffet-style meal; prayers for the nation, military and families; and a message of faith and mission-calling to stop the stigma associated with mental illness and save lives.
Chaplain (Maj.) Christopher Weinrich, Fort Leavenworth Garrison plans/operations chaplain and ceremony narrator, said the luncheon commemorates the nation’s need for prayer, as well as acknowledges the pluralistic religious groups throughout the military.
Chaplain (Maj.) Adam Langley, Command and General Staff College student, performed the national anthem, and scripture readings and various prayers were delivered during the observance by chaplains and religious support service members including Weinrich; Chaplain (Maj.) Arek Ochalek, religious support integrator, Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate chaplain; Cpl. Jonathan White, religious affairs specialist with Army Corrections Brigade; Chaplain (Capt.) Michael Shipma, Midwest Joint Regional Corrections Facility Battalion (Corrections) facility chaplain; Chaplain (Col.) Matt Atkins, religious support observer, coach/trainer with Mission Command Training Program; and Chaplain (Col.) Sean Wead, Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth senior chaplain.
Guest speaker retired Maj. Gen. Gregg Martin, author of “Bipolar General: My Forever War with Mental Illness,” entitled his message “Keeping Faith to Battle Mental Illness, Stop Stigma and Save Lives.” He recounted his bipolar disorder diagnosis in 2014, when he was in his 36th-year of military service as a two-star general serving as the National Defense University president and working for Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey. Martin said the disorder had helped him through decades of success, until the mania went too high and led to crisis that nearly destroyed him.
“My brain completely went over the edge, and I became a maniac,” Martin said, explaining that the term means mania to an extreme level. “I was over the top, off the rails, out of control, extremely disruptive and erratic. My faculty administrators and students wrote dozens of anonymous letters to the chairman detailing my bizarre behavior.”
After what he described as a fair and impartial assessment, his longtime mentor and friend Dempsey praised him for his work at NDU but asked for his resignation and ordered him to get a psychiatric evaluation.
Martin said he reacted to that shocking directive with joy rather than anger or embarrassment, due to the mania, and thought God would soon place him in an even more important role.
“I was actually right that day in the chairman’s office, because my mental health advocacy these past eight years is the most important work and most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life,” Martin said. “After years of mental health crisis, recovery and building a new life, I’m now in a really good place, living a happy, healthy, purposeful life. God has moved me on to a greater mission of sharing my bipolar story to help stop stigma, promote recovery and save lives.”
Martin said medical personnel determined his genetic predisposition for bipolar disorder, which was later known to affect two of his three children, was triggered by the intense stress in 2003 when he a combat engineer brigade commander overseeing a unit of more than 10,000 soldiers playing a pivotal role on the battlefield in Iraq.
“I felt like Superman, that I was invincible,” Martin said of himself in the early War on Terrorism. “I was all over the battlefield, anticipating and solving problems before anybody else knew it was a problem to be solved. My mind felt like a super computer — I was creative, making life and death decisions under fire. My energy levels were through the roof, and I needed very little sleep. Most of my year in Iraq was characterized by high-performing mania, euphoria and joy, occasionally punctuated by depression, rage, fear and grief.”
Martin said he engaged in every available chapel program and prayed all the time. He credits God for not being killed or wounded.
“I think God gave me stability and wisdom, and by all accounts, a successful command,” he said. “(I) could have shot off the rails in Iraq. My faith was key; it was the bedrock of my mental toughness and resilience in Iraq.”
Martin said his brain responded to the stress of war by producing excessive amounts of dopamine and endorphins, which resulted in his high-performing mania.
“Unfortunately, this mania upended my brain chemistry, damaged my brain circuitry and launched me into a life dominated by unknown, unrecognized and undiagnosed bipolar disorder.”
After that year in Iraq when he was euphoric and accomplishing so much, Martin said he suffered a 10-month-long depression upon redeployment to Germany. He reported the depression, but because he wasn’t suicidal, medical personnel declared him fit for duty.
“The fact is I wasn’t — they were wrong, but nobody knew,” he said, adding that eventually he felt fine again. That first up-down cycle with the disorder became his “life pattern” over the next decade.
Martin continued on in his career, crediting the structure, routine and discipline of Army life and his devotion to God as what helped him through the high stress of new assignments.
“Yet my bipolar mania helped my performance in many ways by providing ever higher levels of energy, drive, enthusiasm and creativity. It fueled my career ascendance — until it didn’t.”
Martin said his highs and lows became more extreme and resulted in full-blown mania in 2014 when Dempsey removed him from command.
“It was clearly the best decision for myself, my family, my health and the organization,” he said. “I have since learned that when you are in a state of mania like that, your other organs, not just your brain, are at high risk — I mean, I could easily have had a heart attack or a stroke during that period of intense full-blown mania.”
Martin said he crashed into a hopeless depression with psychosis and passive suicidal ideations.
“For me (the ideations) were anything but passive — instead they were real, powerful and life-consuming. They could have easily transformed into active ideation and actual suicide. I’m fortunate to be alive. God held me in his grip and saved me from death.”
During his mania, Martin said his “attitude of gratitude” and religious zeal was deemed obsessive by his family and colleagues, but Martin countered that most religious leaders could be described as obsessed. He admitted that in the “depths of bipolar hell” he grew angry at God, but realized a few years later that God’s plan was for him to save lives “from the ravages of mental illness.”
Despite extensive medical treatment and religious activity, Martin said he was still very ill, until he was prescribed lithium, which stabilized him. He called it a miracle and said the medication and lifestyle changes were gifts from God.
“Despite the darkness and doubt, my recovery convinces me that God loves and cares for me,” he said. “As the great physician, he assembled an expert team of doctors, nurses, family, friends and others who came alongside me in the time of trial.”
Martin, who referred to himself as an expert through lived experience, said turning to God in prayer and quiet meditation is for him an antidote to the stress, agitation, anxiety and rage that can trigger the “bipolar monster,” and he described figuratively fencing off those things that can cause triggers as if they were minefields and avoiding them.
Martin shared some bipolar and depression statistics, emphasizing that 20 percent of people experience mental illness and the rest of the population, as family members, friends and colleagues, are affected by mental illness.
“These illnesses can lead to destruction of everything — family, marriage, career, finances — lead to homelessness, addiction, incarceration and death,” Martin said. “But the good news is that these medical conditions are all treatable. Correctly diagnosed and treated, people with mental illness can live healthy, happy, purposeful and successful lives.”
Martin said he decided to “own” his diagnosis and not be embarrassed or stigmatized.
“I know it is a physiological condition inside my brain, so there was no room for stigma or any of that stuff, so I said, I am going to own this and learn everything I can about this brain disease, and then go to war with it so that I can recover, build a new life and prevent relapse.”
Martin said he shares his story to help save lives, relationships and careers.
“My vision is that everyone who has a mental health disorder gets medical help free of stigma — this would prevent many, many suicides,” Martin said, noting that other diseases like cancer aren’t stigmatized, and neither should mental illness, which is also physiological in nature.
“Stigma is grounded in ignorance and fear. It’s a blatant form of prejudice and discrimination, and it is the greatest deterrent to people not getting the mental health support they need,” Martin said. “Stigma is costing lives.”
Martin charged the luncheon attendees to learn to recognize mental illness symptoms in themselves and others, and to get help, with haste. He asked the leaders in the room to help stop stigma associated with mental health disorders.
The Fort Leavenworth Chaplain Family Life Center offers pastoral counseling services. Call 913-684-8997 or 913-680-7336 or e-mail daniel.a.herring2.mil@army.mil.
Military OneSource offers a wide variety of resources and information. Visit https://www.militaryonesource.mil/health-wellness/mental-health/resources/.
The Military Crisis Line (dial 988 then press 1, chat online or text 838255) is free, confidential and available 24/7 to all service members and veterans. For more information, visit https://www.veteranscrisisline. net/get-help-now/military-crisis-line/.
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