Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths, U.S. Says

Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths, U.S. Says (Update1)

By Avram Goldstein

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.

Insel echoed a Rand Corporation study published last month that found about 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post- traumatic stress disorder or depression, and only half of them receive treatment. About 1.6 million U.S. troops have fought in the two wars since October 2001, the report said. About 4,560 soldiers had died in the conflicts as of today, the Defense Department reported on its Web site.

Based on those figures and established suicide rates for similar patients who commonly develop substance abuse and other complications of post-traumatic stress disorder, ``it's quite possible that the suicides and psychiatric mortality of this war could trump the combat deaths,'' Insel said.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, known as PTSD, is the failure to cope after a major shock, such as an auto accident, a rape or combat, Insel said. PTSD may remain dormant for months or years before it surfaces, and in about 10 percent of cases people never recover, he said.
go here for more
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=a2_71Klo2vig&refer=home


Right now I want to label this post "Damn the media!" How long are they going to let the government get away with saying "they didn't know" and they "still don't know" when even I knew? What pissed me off the most about this (yes, I know I'm a Chaplain but I'm still human) is all the data was there and they should have known. What I suspect right now is that they did know and were crossing their fingers to see what they could get away with not doing first. How else can you explain how I would know what was coming and they, the experts, the people paid to know, didn't?

All I did was take what was learned from Vietnam and took it from there. Why couldn't the media have done the same so they would be reporting on all of this when the Undersecretary of the VA was too busy in Bible study to do his job? Why didn't they report on this when Nicholson was not giving the Congress the right numbers and even worse, sent money back unspent?

All these years people like me were screaming across the country and we were called every name in the book. instead of being taken seriously and at least getting them to check on what we were screaming about. What did they have to lose by at least taking a look at the same data? Too many lost their lives because the people who had the power to do something with the data didn't bother.

Did they think Vietnam Veterans were anything other than human? That's where all the data came from but these people didn't care. We lost over 200,000 of them from suicide alone but I guess they just didn't matter enough. It looks like the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans didn't matter enough either.