We need to start asking for proof of what reporters say today

We need to start asking for proof of what reporters say today
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 13, 2013

Don't take my word for it but then again you shouldn't take the reporters word either especially when there are so many years of published reports to prove them wrong this time. While the title of the article is "Combat-suicide link disputed in study" the link on The Leaf Chronicle says "Combat-suicide-link-debunked" and naturally that is the one that people would latch onto.

More than 145,000 people from all branches took part, including active-duty service members, reservists and retirees, and they were followed from 2001 to 2008, a period in which the U.S. waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The findings were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A recent increase in the military suicide rate has raised concerns about a possible link between suicide and deployment, including long or repeated tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the new results should lay those concerns to rest, said Dr. Nancy Crum-Cianflone, another researcher with the Navy center.

The problem is there have been too many studies with a different outcome. We've talked about these before but it seems to have done little good when this report keeps getting passed around as if it is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth with no one asking any questions. The obvious conclusion is that results will only prove what the researchers looked for. In other words, they find what they want to.

The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that when we're talking about members of the military, they do not go from being willing to die for someone else into someone wanting to die without a reason. They care about each other so much that most of the suicides tied to military are committed back on US soil when the unit is out of danger. Few commit suicide while deployed.

Why? Because they are the least selfish among the population. They are worried about the others they are with and do not want to let anyone of them down. Still it did happen and in 2003 there was a news report on suicides while deployed into Iraq.

Suicides among American servicemen in Iraq are running at up to three times the usual rate, the army has revealed.

Since the start of the war 11 have been confirmed and a dozen more deaths are being investigated as suspected suicides. If all are confirmed it would mean an annualized rate of 34 per 100,000 servicemen.

When they come home the survivors of attempted suicide say they wanted to die because they didn't want to become a burden to their families. They knew their lives were falling apart but they also knew it was affecting their families.

Supposedly they got it back in 2006 when the Military was trying to help soldiers by reaching out to their families but it turns out too many still have no clue what PTSD is, why it is harming someone they love or why their family is falling apart. When it comes to the families I work with when it is too late to save a life, they blame themselves until they understand no one told them what they needed to know. Huge issue and under-reported.

The military claims that most were never deployed into combat. While some take it as a sign that combat does not contribute to the rise in suicides (even though I don't believe it) it should sound an alarm that the mental health exams given to recruits have failed. If combat has little to do with it then they have let in people with mental illness, trained them to use weapons to kill and armed them. The military should be ashamed of themselves for trying to misdirect attention away from the simple fact that training itself is a cause of trauma.

They avoid mentioning things like military sexual abuse, hazing and abusive leadership in too many cases. The fact that when a young man or woman comes to the conclusion enlisting was a huge mistake is also avoided in the discussion. They can't just give their two weeks notice and go home. The discharge will stay with them the rest of their lives. Plus add in that some of the recruits never thought of doing anything else and you add in a whole new trauma on their shoulders all dealing with mental health.

In 2006 it was Douglas A. Barber "a 35-year-old truck driver, shot and killed himself on Jan. 16 with a shotgun as Lee County sheriff's deputies and two friends on the phone tried to talk him out of it." He was a National Guardsman but his death didn't have to be counted since he was not active. Amazing how National Guards and Reservists are ignored in all the numbers released by the press. They are on the same monthly report the DOD releases with the Army suicides. They were also available when the press was pushing the suicide numbers for 2012 without mentioning them.

Studies have shown that thousands of veterans suffer some significant form of stress from their tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. A military study of more than 6,000 combat veterans in 2004 found that one in eight Marines and soldiers — more than 12 percent of the group — reported symptoms of PTSD.

In February, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 35 percent of Iraq veterans sought mental health services, while almost 20 percent reported a mental health problem.

This can go on and on considering my older blog has over 8,000 reports on it and this one has over 19,000. So as I started out, don't take my word on anything but whenever you read a news report, don't settle for what you are being told today when it was totally different before. The fact is, too many are linked to military service and that is something they can never, ever cover up.

The most obvious piece of information is what years the "study" focused on. 2008 is when the number of suicides went up after the military and the VA started to "address prevention."