Suicides Highlight Failures of Veterans’ Support System

Yesterday I posted about Wounded Warrior Project asking Is Wounded Warrior Project a country crock for all I've been hearing about them while they take in millions of dollars a year but we hear little about what they actually do. Now they are being quoted all over the internet with this claim.

80% of wounded veterans cite mental health woes
By Patricia Kime - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Mar 24, 2012 9:24:33 EDT
In a survey conducted this year of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, nearly 80 percent reported having symptoms of a combat-related mental health condition, and roughly half said they had a traumatic brain injury.

Among the 2,300 Wounded Warrior Project members who responded to the survey, 62 percent said they currently have depression — nearly eight times the rate in the general population and more than four times the figure cited in a 2008 Rand Corp. report on military head injuries and mental health conditions.

About a third said their conditions have made it difficult to get or hold a job. The conditions also hamper relationships and recovery, respondents said.

2,300 members but millions a year donated to them? There are organizations all over this country claiming to be helping veterans but we see little evidence of success. We see even less success coming from the DOD and the VA. Frankly I'm just tired of it.

Everyday I get up and start to read the stories from across the country and everyday I'm reminded that our veterans are not getting what they deserve or coming close to getting what they need. What are they asking for? They want to heal, make a living after offering their lives in service and to know they can take care of their families.

Suicides Highlight Failures of Veterans’ Support System

Noting that an average of 18 veterans commit suicide every day, Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote, “No more veterans should be compelled to agonize and perish while the government fails to perform its obligations.” The department appealed, and Judge Reinhardt’s opinion has been temporarily vacated, pending a ruling from a an 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit.


Gordon Erspamer, a San Francisco lawyer representing the two groups that brought the suit, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, said it was “incredible that this sorry record of ineptitude and lack of procedures for emergency cases continues even under the watchful eye of the Ninth Circuit.”

By AARON GLANTZ
Published: March 24, 2012

Courtesy of Dianne Hamilton
William Hamilton, an Iraq war veteran, stepped in front of a train hours after being discharged from a Travis Air Force Base hospital.

Francis Guilfoyle, a 55-year-old homeless veteran, drove his 1985 Toyota Camry to the Department of Veterans Affairs campus in Menlo Park early in the morning of Dec. 3, took a stepladder and a rope out of the car, threw the rope over a tree limb and hanged himself.

It was an hour before his body was cut down, according to the county coroner’s report.

“When I saw him, my heart just sank,” said Dennis Robinson, 51, a formerly homeless Army veteran who discovered Mr. Guilfoyle’s body. “This is supposed to be a safe place where a vet can get help. Something failed him.”

Mr. Guilfoyle’s death is one of a series of recent suicides by veterans who live in the jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. The Palo Alto V.A. is one of the agency’s elite campuses, home to the Congressionally chartered National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The poor record of the Department of Veterans Affairs in decreasing the high suicide rate of veterans has already emerged as a major issue for policy makers and the judiciary.

On Wednesday, the V.A. Inspector General in Washington released the results of a nine-month investigation into the May 2010 death of another veteran, William Hamilton. The report said social workers at the department in Palo Alto made “no attempt” to ensure that Hamilton, a mentally ill 26-year-old who served in Iraq, was hospitalized at a department facility in the days before he killed himself by stepping in front of a train in Modesto.

The Bay Area was also shocked by the March 14 death of Abel Gutierrez, a 27-year-old Iraq war veteran, who the police said killed his mother and his 11-year-old sister before shooting himself. Two weeks earlier the Gilroy Police Department intervened to ask the V.A. to help Mr. Gutierrez.

An examination of each case reveals faulty communication inside the V.A. system, which missed opportunities to help the veterans.
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