Vietnam Veteran's battles with PTSD didn't end

Suicide: An epidemic affecting veterans
By STEVEN STRATFORD
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
First of all, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done for me in my personal battle with the Veterans Administration.

Over the 20 years that my claim for assistance has been pending, I have asked every single federally elected representative I have had to please assist me in my case, and you are the only one who actually did. Every other one simply wrote a letter to the VA asking them what was going on with my case, sent me a copy of the reply they received, and that was the end of that. I will be forever grateful to you for your help in this matter, regardless of the final outcome.

Now I would like to spend a few moments addressing a broader problem and ask what you would recommend that those of us concerned about these specific issues should do to remedy them.

The Register had an article pointing out (according to U.S. Army records) that over the past two years, 8,000 U.S. Army soldiers have deserted the Army ("Army desertion rates rise 80 percent," Nov. 18). Why might that be?

According to "Democracy Now" on PBS, in addition to the 3,873 American soldiers now killed in Iraq (and this is according to the Veterans Administration's own statistics), more than 6,000 U.S.-Iraq War veterans have already committed suicide. And the VA anticipates an additional 5,000 veterans will take their own lives in the next 12 months. This information was also reported on MSNBC news the following day.

Now, as a fellow Vietnam War veteran, I am quite sure that you are already aware of the next statistic I would like to share with the readers of this letter. Although there are 58,252 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., "Over 150,000 (American Vietnam War veterans) have committed suicide since the war ended" (according to Chuck Deans' 1990 book, "Nam Vet").

Since then, a retired VA doctor said his estimate of the number of Vietnam Veteran suicides was (now) 200,000 men, and that the reason the official suicide statistics are so much lower is that in many cases the suicides were documented as accidents, primarily single-car drunk driving accidents and self-inflicted gunshot wounds that were not accompanied by a suicide note or statement. According to this doctor, "the underreporting of suicides was primarily an act of kindness to the surviving relatives."
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20 years of fighting to have a claim approved and 20 years of asking for help. Most of the time he had been turned away. Given the fact most of the time veterans try to get help from their Congressmen or Senators, they receive form letters telling them how much they have done for veterans instead of helping the one asking for help, it's a wonder what keeps them going.

You can take a soldier out of combat, but more times than you realize you cannot get the combat out of the soldier. How can we expect any of them to just get over it? I'm always grateful when I read about or hear about someone coming back "ok" from what they go through. Still, I have to warn about the other shoe that can drop years down the road when the families and the veterans least expect it.

When you read this article you see again how Vietnam has really never ended. I know I've posted it often about the suicides between 150,000 and 200,000 but apparently not enough since so little has been done to address their wounds as well as the newest generation, so read it again.

I'm "no one" in all of this when it comes to having any kind of power, yet I am every wife dealing with this and that is power. Do you have any clue how many of us there are in this country and around the world? Let's put it this way. By 1978 there were 500,000 diagnosed cases according to a study by the DAV. Between 150,000 and 200,000 committed suicide and I think even those numbers are lower than reality simply because most of the when PTSD surfaces years after combat, the connection between combat and the changes are never made. There were 300,000 homeless Vietnam veterans according to the National Coalition For Homeless Veterans a few years ago. Between last year and this year, there were 148,000 Vietnam veterans seeking help for PTSD. And then you have the staggering numbers of claims backlogged, on appeal or simply given up on. People like me tracking all of this for all of these years are predicting at least 800,000 from Iraq and Afghanistan if both occupations ended today. If you think there is not power in those kind of numbers when you multiply the families, you underestimate yourself.

Why so many from this generation? The average rate of PTSD by the most trusted experts puts the figure at 1 out of 3, but they also warned that the redeployments raise the risk of developing PTSD by 50% for each time sent back into combat.

We need to all join together and push Congress to get their act together and start taking care of the problems or we are going to have more veterans fighting the system 20 years from now for wounds they received in service to this nation. Do more have to take their own life to end their battle with PTSD instead of being healed? Haven't we already lost enough of them? Does our pain end when their life does?



Kathie Costos

Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington