Every 80 minutes another veteran takes his/her own life

Scott Olson, the Iraq veteran hit by a tear gas canister became the topic of many stories across the web but when reports come out about another veteran committing suicide, these same reporters ignore it, bloggers avoid it and the VA throws their hands up in the air.

Every 80 minutes another veteran takes his/her own life. Think about that. These people survived bombs and bullets along with every hardship known to man but they couldn't survive being back home. Why?

For all the advances made across the country on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the government has yet to acknowledge that the type of PTSD caused by combat is more complex and deeper than what others have. All PTSD causes are not the same any more than all levels are equal. For servicemen and women they are not just witnesses of traumatic events, they are participants.

While civilians develop PTSD from just one exposure to trauma, they face it on a daily basis while deployed and then have to think about being redeployed all over again right back into the alter-world of combat. The Army released a study several years ago admitting redeployments increased the risk of PTSD by 50% yet there are reports of some doing over ten tours of duty. Didn't they understand what this does to a person?

When Vietnam was going on most did one-one year tour of duty and still we saw high rates of PTSD, incarcerations and suicides. When you start your day in combat and end it back home it is equal to a bad Twilight Zone show but they continue to do it. The last report issued on the percentages of PTSD is a third for Marines, 40% for Army and 50% for National Guards. Over 2 million have been deployed into combat at least once.

One more thing to think about as you read the following is movie time. We go to the movies or rent a video from Netflix that takes two hours. By the time you finish watching your movie and escaping from reality, another veteran has chosen to commit suicide to end the reality they have had to live with since we sent him/her into combat. The movie they have been watching, being haunted by, is what they saw in combat in real life. We play video games and feel the pull to play them over and over again by choice. For them, they would pay any price to be able to get the real life horrors they saw out of their minds.

Kayyem: U.S. veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes
Editor's Note: Juliette Kayyem is a former Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government and a foreign policy columnist for the Boston Globe. She tweets @JulietteKayyem.
By Juliette Kayyem - Special to CNN
October 31st, 2011
This last week, policymakers and presidential candidates debated the wisdom of President Obama's decision to withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of this year. By this weekend, the Pentagon's buildup of resources in the Gulf - a "just in case" strategy - suggested that abandonment (the term used by Obama's critics) was not the right way to describe our efforts.

Whatever the contours of the continuing wars, the real battles still loom in the military. And it isn't just about the budget and what the debt ceiling commission will do in the next few days.

The real battle is over military and veteran suicides. To put this in perspective: Based on the years between 2005 and 2010, service members take their lives at a rate of one every 36 hours; the Veterans Administration now estimates that a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes.
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