Suicide numbers show DOD and VA don't have a clue

There are things in the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs that are working. More veterans are seeking help for PTSD because more of them know what it is, know there is help available and for them, the stigma of PTSD comes with being part of a tiny percentage of of the general population. Less than 10% of the population of America served in combat. That's the good news. The rest is bad.

No one was asking about why so many veterans felt the need to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline even with all the years of attempts to treat PTSD and all the programs that came out in the last ten years. Numbers of suicides went up just as calls flooded into the hotlines.

No one was asking why so many were still committing suicide with all the money spent, publicity on PTSD or charities popping up all over the country claiming to be devoted to treating PTSD.

What should cause all of us to be even more infuriated is the simple fact the DOD and the VA kept repeating failed attempts with the same deadly results.

Brief: DoD must alter suicide prevention plan
By Patricia Kime - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Nov 3, 2011 18:17:03 EDT
Military suicides threaten the health of the all-volunteer forces and the Pentagon is “losing the battle” to prevent them, with active-duty members taking their own lives at a rate of one every 36 hours, a new report concludes.

The policy brief, “Losing the Battle: The Challenge of Military Suicide,” from the Washington-based Center for a New American Security think-tank, exhorts the Defense Department to change protocols and policies that it says hinder suicide-prevention efforts.

It recommends changes ranging from establishing unit cohesion programs after deployments to encouraging commanders to speak with troops about their privately owned firearms.

Service in wartime, say authors Margaret Harrell and Nancy Berglass, can chip away at three endemic human factors that keep people from committing suicide. Some psychiatrists have identified these as belongingness, usefulness and a natural aversion to pain or death.

According to the report, service members feel a strong sense of belonging when they are in a field unit, but this may wane after they transfer from their unit or leave the military.
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