Surviving Families of Suicide in the Military

"Military suicides show some families work through their grief, while others are left feeling angry and confused."


Surviving Families of Suicide in the Military Speak to DoD Task Force on Suicide Prevention


This video from CNN talks about a life lost with a family left behind praising TAPS but does little to prevent more families from having to go to a military funeral after the soldier has come home.


Military Suicide: CNN's Interview with the Ruocco Family


It has not been a secret that the military has had a problem for a very long time. All the years of claiming to be doing something about it is better than their silence but the problem we all seem to overlook is that for all the years they've been at it, the numbers don't show they know what they're doing is working.

Supporting Those Left Behind By Military Suicides
by SARAH GONZALEZ
October 21, 2010
A spike in military suicides has led to a renewed focus on prevention efforts by the Defense Department. But the surviving family members often have an uneven network of support that allows some to work through their grief, while others are left feeling angry and confused.

The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors — TAPS — is trying to fill the gaps by bringing together families from across the country to share their grief and learn.

About 250 adults and children recently gathered at a hotel in Arlington, Va., to share their stories at the TAPS seminar for surviving family members of suicide by service members. Some traveled from as far as Alaska and Hawaii.

Adding Guilt To The Grief

For many, like Denise Coutlakis, the grief is still raw. Her husband, Col. Todd Hixson, committed suicide in October 2009. The 27-year Marine veteran of several wars had been home just three weeks from his only deployment to Iraq.

In 2007, Army Spc. Jeremy LaClaire returned from his first deployment to Afghanistan distant and unable to relate to his family. His widow, Megan LaClaire, says the Army diagnosed him as bipolar. Less than a year later, he was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq.

read more here
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130723915

Congress has held countless hearings on PTSD and suicide but while they listen to the problems from those left behind, they have done nothing to discover what has worked and replicate it. Wives like me have been there and done that. We watched our Vietnam veteran husbands lose the will to live, battled their fights with the VA for help and compensation and try to give them everything we had to keep them going. Our stories are not all hopeless but some of us have lost our husbands or other relatives to suicide because of their military duty. My marriage has lasted over 26 years. Friends of mine have been married 30-40 years showing that there are things that do work to keep them alive.

PTSD is as old as man going into combat. Yet with this, with the rate of divorce in this country, with 18 veterans a day committing suicide, ending up homeless or incarcerated, we have managed to survive it all. We have done it for reasons to complicated to get into right now, but we did it because we understood them and they were worth fighting for. If Congress and the DOD ever really want to stop all of this from happening they need to listen to the families that made it through the fire so that it won't be too late for other families to be able to do the same.