MILITARY: Two Marine suicides raise total for year to 28
By MARK WALKER mlwalker@nctimes.com
Posted: Friday, November 4, 2011
Two active-duty Marines took their own lives in October, raising the number of Marine Corps suicides for the year to 28.
The latest report from the service's Suicide Prevention Program also says that 11 Marines attempted suicide in October, raising that year-to-date figure to 163 for 2011.
The news comes on the heels of a report this week from the influential Center for a New American Security in Washington that says U.S. service members took their own lives at a rate of one every 36 hours between 2005 and 2010.
The report also says that a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes, attributing that information to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
read more here
I spend my days with them in one form or another. I hear their fears, complaints and hopes. I see their tears but I also get to see their smiles. I know a blog like this is mostly depressing with more bad endings than happy ones but the happy endings don't come by themselves. It takes others paying attention to the suffering of millions of veterans to make them happen. It requires someone doing more than just paying attention or offering up a prayer. It takes action.
We need to get Congress to address this once and for all! They need to start asking serious questions about what the Department of Defense is doing about this and ask who has been responsible for all the failures for all these years. They are not new at this. They have been looking into combat related PTSD for 40 years. They should know better. Hold them accountable for all of this or we'll keep reading about them taking their own lives after risking them for others. Until people are held accountable nothing will change.
"Commanders now often speak about the problem and encourage Marines who may be having issues to reach out for help, emphasizing that doing so will not end their service careers."
ReplyDeleteMaybe not, but it WILL rain all Kinds of trouble into their Post Service Careers/Lives. Having a Psychiatric Label stuck on our people in trade for the sacrifices they're making is one Low, Mean, & Dirty trick.
The psychiatric drugs the VA & Mil Drs are handing out, to 1 in every 6 of our people do NOT work, at all. But they Do cause Psychosis & Suicides/Homicides.
What I'd Like to see is More 1 to 1 support from our men and women who've Been There, Done That, to help each other, rather than the robotic, write a prescription and write up a bill the pros are giving them now.
Someone, at home, with a Psychiatric/Psychological college degree, is Never going to understand what our people who've been in theatre are experiencing.
Thank you for the comment D Bunker and you are totally right. The best mental health workers are veterans with PTSD. Aside from understanding it, they prove that healing can happen.
ReplyDeletePills are just a mask to cover the symptoms and not part of healing it.
We're going to see more and more as long as the DOD keeps repeating the same failed programs instead of learning from them.