It's a Muppet family picnic in the park, but Elmo is sad and confused: His Uncle Jack won't be there, because he's dead, and Elmo can't quite grasp that he's never coming back. For Elmo's moptop cousin Jesse, it's hard to even talk about the loss: Jack was her dad.

The story line may seem highly unusual for "Sesame Street," but when Elmo and friends aren't on their day job being cute, colorful and cuddly, they've taken on another mission: helping children of military families struggling with loss, grief and fear.

With some deep-pocketed sponsors like Wal-Mart, Sesame Workshop has been steadily expanding a program called "Talk, Listen, Connect" aimed at kids of all ages, including the youngest and most vulnerable. More than two million U.S. children have been affected directly by a parent's military wartime deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan; 40% of these children are younger than 5 years old.

According to the Defense Department, in the past 8½ years more than 12,000 military children have experienced the death of a parent. Research shows that even the toll of military deployments is steep; a study last year by the Rand Corp. found that children in military families were more likely to report anxiety than children in the general population, and that the longer a parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the more likely their children were to have difficulties in school and at home.

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Talking to support groups, Sesame officials learned that military families often had little help in communicating with children about the realities of war. "A lot of military support programs are more for the parents, but kids really relate to Elmo and 'Sesame Street,'" says Heidi Malkowski, who works at McGuire Air Force Base as the secretary to the 305th Medical Group Commander. Before her husband, Air Force Master Sgt. Edward Malkowski, was deployed to Yongsan Air Base in Korea last year, the couple watched the video about deployment with their three boys, ages 3, 10 and 13.

Though the two eldest children were more sophisticated than the average Muppet target audience, "all of them benefited," says Ms. Malkowski. "It gave them a feel for what was going to happen, and that it was OK to have feelings about it and talk about any problems they were having with it." Since the family doesn't live on a military base and the children attend public schools, "there isn't the same connection that you'd have on a military base with other kids going through the same thing," she adds.

Kim Ruocco's Marine husband, who flew 75 helicopter missions in Iraq, came home in December 2004, and was told he would be returning to combat four months later. Suffering from symptoms of depression, he committed suicide in February 2005. With two boys, now 13 and 15, "I wish I'd had something like the Sesame video to help them then when I was wondering what I was going to tell the kids and how I was going to get them through this," Ms. Ruocco says. Now deputy director of suicide education and support for TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, she says the program helps kids understand that "it won't always hurt this bad, there is another side of grief, and you will one day feel joy again and some peace."

This week a congressionally mandated task force released its final report on military suicides to the Pentagon citing “heightened operational tempo, repeated deployments and insufficient quantity and quality of dwell time” as contributing to incredibly high suicide rates in the military.

The report noted that from 2005 to 2009, more than 1,100 servicemembers committed suicide—an average of 1 suicide every 36 hours. Suicide rates in the Marine Corps and Army have severely increased and the Army rate has more than doubled. Since 2001, 252 servicemembers have killed themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The task force recognized efforts made by all military branches to prevent suicide, but concluded that they are a falling short because the programs are not centrally organized. The rush to respond to the challenge and the lack of strategic planning has led to unintended consequences. These include, inefficient programs and missed prevention opportunities.

To address this fundamental problem the task force recommended creating a “Suicide Prevention Policy Division” at the Office of the Secretary of Defense to centralize planning and implementation. Additionally, the task force had 49 findings and made 76 targeted recommendations, including:

-Reduce stress on the force
-Focus on overall servicemember well-being (mind, body, and spirit)
-Develop Comprehensive Stigma Reduction Campaign Plan
-Hold leaders accountable to ensure positive command climate
-Develop skills-based training regarding suicide prevention
-Coordinate and leverage the strengths of installation and community support services for both Active and Reserve component servicemembers
-Standardize suicide investigations
-Support and fund ongoing DoD suicide prevention research

The task force, established by the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, was composed of seven DoD officials and seven non-DoD officials with broad military and civilian expertise. Co-chairs included Major General Philip Volpe, Commanding General of the Army’s Western Regional Medical Command and Ms. Bonnie Carroll, Director of the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS). The report now goes to Defense Secretary Gates, who has 90 days to approve the report and submit it to Congress.