Accountability AWOL on Military Suicides

Accountability AWOL on Military Suicides
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
December 10, 2012
Can all military suicides be attributed to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? No, but in order to answer that question honestly, you first have to know what PTSD is.

PTSD is an invader. It comes to 1 out of 3 people exposed to the same traumatic event. Some use one 1 of 5, but the longterm research has supported the 1 out of 3.) The American Psychological Association defines trauma this way.

"Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives. Psychologists can help these individuals find constructive ways of managing their emotions."

We can acknowledge that civilians can end up with PTSD without going to war but the DOD has a problem acknowledging that when a soldier has not gone yet. One person's "trauma" may not be so bad for others exposed to the same thing. While all military suicides cannot be connected to the trauma of experiencing combat, they are all connected to the loss of hope that the next day will be better than today.

The military points out that some of the servicemen and women committed suicide without ever deploying. They avoid the fact that training itself can be very traumatic for some of these young men and women. They are broken down to be trained, push their bodies past where they have on their own. They are enduring so many changes that the reality of what they just committed to can in itself be too traumatic to handle. They also hear about others serving in combat not only being shot at and killed, but blown up by an IED, being burned, losing limbs and suffering from traumatic brain injuries. When the DOD says "they were not deployed" you need to remember most of them were just kids right out of high school and the fear, the loss of hope was as real to them as being in combat itself. The days of thinking war was like a computer game ended when they arrived into harsh reality world.

Then they avoid the fact that less than half of the military personnel needing help for PTSD seek it. The stigma is just about as strong as their desire to go home after deployment. The other factor is another part of the training they receive sold as making them "resilient" and training their brains to be mentally tough enough to handle combat. This translates into their minds that if they should end up with PTSD it is their fault for being weak minded and not training right. It started with "Battlemind" and evolved into "Resiliency Training."

Unless this program is taken apart we will see more suicides.

I believe the members of the House and Senate do care about our troops and are saddened by the rise in military suicides but they have shown little evidence they have learned from all these years of research.

The best example of this was the speech Senator Max Baucus when he talks about the number of suicide from Montana.

If you just watch this video, knowing nothing, you will think they may just have gotten active addressing suicides, but you'd be totally wrong.

The fact is Montana has been trying to do something about military suicides since 2008. Spc. Chris Dana of the Montana National Guard committed suicide. In August of 2008 while still a Senator, President Obama traveled to Montana to meet with Dana' stepbrother, Matt Kuntz, who became a advocate for PTSD treatment programs to prevent more like Dana taking their own lives.

Rise of Military Suicides Driven By More Than War
By John M Donnelly
Roll Call Staff
Dec. 9, 2012

An emotional Max Baucus took to the Senate floor recently to talk about an article in his home state’s top newspaper that he said “hit me in the gut.”

Montana leads the nation in suicides per capita, the article said. And many of them were military personnel and veterans. Baucus then told of the 2007 suicide of an Iraq War veteran of multiple tours who had been affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.

Before taking his life, he told a relative he feared returning to Iraq because he thought he would be killed.

“That caused him to be very depressed, and it caused his suicide,” Baucus said.

The six-term Democrat was on the floor to tout the latest initiative an alarmed Congress has adopted to combat the rising numbers of military suicides. For 2012, the Pentagon has reported a record number — 320 suicides, or nearly one a day. That’s double the number of suicides in 2001, before more than a decade of war began.

The pressures of combat on soldiers has undoubtedly contributed to the problem.

However, military statistics reveal that most of the service members who killed themselves in recent years never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. And of those who went to war, most of those who took their own lives never saw combat.
read more here

So now you have some background on what I've been tracking all these years. While reporters can just take what they claim and never look back on what they said long ago, it renders the article useless because nothing changes no matter how many Bills the Congress passes, speeches they give and hearings they hold. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in suicide prevention only to discover it is all getting worse yet no one is being held accountable. Thousands of our veterans are dead! Don't you think the Congress should be wondering why after all they "tried" to do produced these deplorable results?