Suicides and PTSD need to be inculded as price of war

Estimate: 120 Veteran Suicides Per Week
March 24, 2008
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Late last year, a CBS News investigation found that in 2005 "there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That's 120 each and every week, in just one year."

Last week, CBS News reported on data it had just obtained from the government on veterans who were recently treated by the Veterans Administration. In this limited sample, "two age groups stood out between 2000 and 2007. First, ages 20-24 -- those likely to have served during the Iraq-Afghan wars. Suicide attempts rose from 11 to 47. And for vets ages 55 to 59, suicide attempts jumped from 19 to 117."

JOYCE and KEVIN LUCEY

Joyce and Kevin Lucey are the parents of Jeffrey Lucey, who committed suicide after being in Iraq for five months in 2004. Joyce Lucey said today: "My son was betrayed first by a government who sent him to war and then by the Veterans Administration for not giving him the treatment he needed. He and others died from this war but their names will never be on a memorial wall. "The letters we received from him were brief and sanitized. But to his girlfriend of six years, he said in April of 2003 he felt he had done immoral things and that he wanted to erase the last month of his life. 'There are things I wouldn't want to tell you or my parents, because I don't want you to be worried. Even if I did tell you, you'd probably think I was just exaggerating. I would never want to fight in a war again. I've seen and done enough horrible things to last me a lifetime.'"

Kevin Lucey said today: "Jeffrey had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but PTSD is not so much a mental dysfunction as a normal response to an abnormal situation. Jeffrey refused to go to the VA due to the stigma associated with it. We finally got him to the VA, but after he committed suicide, the VA wouldn't give us all his medical records, claiming a Freedom of Information Act exemption. We finally managed to get the records -- Jeffrey had told them how he was thinking of committing suicide and they put him down as a moderate risk." Joyce and Kevin Lucey testified at the recent Winter Soldier conference.

Audio of their testimony is available online, as is video of various testimony.

go here for the rest

http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=1673

While the Vietnam Memorial Wall contains over 58,000 names, it does not include the names of all who died in service to this nation. We need to begin to ask ourselves how we can separate out the ultimate sacrifices made to decide who is worthy of inclusion in the death count and who is not.

Over the years there have been many statements made by military people concerning suicides. The classifications of combat and non-combat deaths provides two classes of deaths and supports the view of some that when the death occurs because of suicide, they did it to themselves and should not be honored. It never dawns on them that had it not been for the combat operation they were deployed to, the wound of PTSD would not have taken all hope away from them to the point where death seemed the only treatment they could obtain to erase the memories, the flashbacks and end the nightmares. The fact that PTSD comes after trauma never enters their own minds. The suicide of a soldier is a life lost because of combat, because of service and they should not be regarded as substandard.

The names on the wall do not include those who committed suicide after Vietnam. The 117,000 who committed suicide by 1986 are not on the Wall. Two studies released after placed the number between 150,000 and 200,000. Can you imagine the Wall containing over 250,000 names? My husband's nephew's name is not on the Wall. He committed suicide.

Today we are seeing 120 per week committing suicide and most of the names you will never know. It is easy to avoid acknowledging the true price of war being paid when we do not honor all of them equally. Some say that to be shot or blown up by a bomb is more worthy than to be wounded by witnessing it and then having your mind so filled with the horror you die as a result of that wound.

Until we face the fact that PTSD is a wound and honor it, treat it as aggressively as we do physical wounds, we will continue to lose more and more everyday of the year. We saw the newspapers with the count of 4,000 deaths in Iraq, yet did not see any mention of how many died in Afghanistan, the other occupation in the War on Terror. We did not see any mention of those who committed suicide after they had returned home and were supposed to be safe from harm. There is too much we do not see because we choose not to.

There were many more deaths associated with Agent Orange and their names are not included on any memorial while the fact exposure to AO would not have happened if they did not serve this nation and were exposed to it. Today AO has been replaced by depleted uranium. The ravages of these chemical weapons does not stop with the veteran but is carried on for generations within their children and birth defects. Most prices paid we do not count and do not face.



Chaplain 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