If you are not livid about military suicides, you haven't been paying attention

If you are not livid about military suicides, you haven't been paying attention
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
January 16, 2013

If you search at the top of this blog for military suicides you'll get a better idea of just how repulsive the headline grabbing news of military suicides at "record high" are and then you may just start to be approaching the level of anger I had over 5 years ago when I started this blog. I was angry before then but livid in 2007. Maybe you can imagine what level I'm at now.


The headlines across the web scream about the number of military suicides at 349, but where are the headlines calling for someone to be held accountable?

Do we hold congress accountable?

Has anyone in the military been held accountable?

Has anyone in the VA been held to account for the number of veterans committing suicide?

Have any among the ever growing list of mega charities been held accountable?

See, when you read the headlines there are many other reports few, if any, reporters know about. I am not a reporter. I am many things but at the top of the list should be researcher and that is what reporters should remember is their duty.

Where are the reports on the survivors of military suicides? Sometimes when a reporter is paying attention to the story they are writing, they actually mention the attempted suicide numbers. That hasn't happened in a very long time. If they had bothered to try to interview some of the more than 30,000 rescues the Suicide Prevention Hotline claims to have made, they may have a better idea about what is lacking in all of this.

The problem is, as I said, I am not a reporter. Reporters need to START DOING THEIR JOBS! My tiny blog can't get the kind of attention they get and this blog depends on reporters actually knowing what they are writing about.

On AP "The Big Story" there is this headline

2012 MILITARY SUICIDES HIT A RECORD HIGH OF 349 but other than the number of suicides at "record high" there is absolutely nothing new in it.

David Rudd, a military suicide researcher and dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Utah, said he sees two main categories of troops who are committing suicide at an accelerating pace: Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffering from depression, post-traumatic stress or substance abuse, and those who have not gone to war but face troubled personal relationships, money problems or legal woes.

but then you'd also have to know when you read something like this, the stories have all been told before.

One such case was Army Spc. Christopher Nguyen, 29, who killed himself last August at an off-post residence he shared with another member of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., according to his sister, Shawna Nguyen.

"He was practically begging for help and nothing was done," she said in an interview.