A predictable suicide at Camp Lejeune

Comment often left on this blog boggle my mind. I wonder how some people can be so oblivious to what PTSD does to men and women that they feel defending them is reached by denying reality. They seem more bothered when a reporter writes a story on a suicide, or a suicide by cop, domestic violence or other crime committed than the reason why it happened. Keep in mind these are not average citizens dealing with their own problems and issues, but individuals dealing with their own problems and still willing to lay down their lives for others. For them to have no history of violence, crimes or behavioral red flags before they deploy, to ending up with all of them after, there is a reason behind it. It is called war and war changes people, changes the way they think, the way they feel and their total outlook on their lives. Denying these deaths are happening is ending up killing more of them. Thinking they have something to be ashamed of, is killing them. Treating them as if they are broken makes them give up. Yet knowing what it is, why it is and what can be done to help them heal, plus doing something about it, that is really defending them. We owe them that much.

A predictable suicide at Camp Lejeune
A doctor warned that mental health care for violent, disturbed Marines was inadequate. Sgt. Tom Bagosy proved it
By Mark Benjamin

Marine Sgt. Tom Bagosy stepped out of his black GMC Sierra pickup and onto the gray, speckled pavement of McHugh Boulevard, a busy thoroughfare in the heart of Camp Lejeune, N.C. He held a pistol in his right hand.

The military police car that had pulled him over idled on the shoulder a safe distance behind him. The midday traffic stopped. Bagosy stood for a moment on the warm pavement under a cloudless May sky. Then he raised the pistol, pointed it to the right side of his throat just below his jaw, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet sliced through his jugular vein, traveled through his skull and exited near the top left side of his head. He crumpled down in the road. Even if the bullet had failed to rip through his brain, shooting through the jugular was solid insurance. He would have bled out in minutes anyway.

Bagosy, 25, who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, had become another statistic in the war-fatigued military and its steadily escalating suicide rate. Last year, 52 Marines committed suicide. The suicide rate among Marines has doubled since 2005, and the Corps has the highest suicide rate in the military. The circumstances of Bagosy's death, however, provide a particularly poignant case study in what many critics say is the military's inadequate response to that suicide crisis.
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A predictable suicide at Camp Lejeune