CNN got veteran suicide report wrong

CNN got veteran suicide report wrong
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 21, 2013

There is a report up on CNN talking about how the number of veterans ending their own lives is higher than 22 a day. That is obvious especially when you consider several states have released their own data that the number of veterans committing suicide in their states is double the civilian population. That happened in Oklahoma and Arizona while in Missouri they are reporting a quarter of their suicides are veterans.

This is what CNN reported.

"Nearly one in five suicides nationally is a veteran, even though veterans make up about 10% of the U.S. population, the News21 analysis found.

The authors of the VA study, Janet Kemp and Robert Bossarte, included many cautions about the interpretation of their data, though they stand by the reliability of their findings. Bossarte said there was a consistency in the samples that allowed them to comfortably project the national figure of 22."

While it is great that CNN took on this report, they got it wrong.

Why suicide rate among veterans may be more than 22 a day
CNN
By Moni Basu
Sat September 21, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The data the suicide rate is based on are incomplete
Examples of uncounted: "suicide by cop," by overdoses and by vehicle crashes
"There's probably a tidal wave of suicides coming"
VA makes appeal for more uniform reporting of suicide data

(CNN) -- Every day, 22 veterans take their own lives. That's a suicide every 65 minutes. As shocking as the number is, it may actually be higher.

The figure, released by the Department of Veterans Affairs in February, is based on the agency's own data and numbers reported by 21 states from 1999 through 2011. Those states represent about 40% of the U.S. population. The other states, including the two largest (California and Texas) and the fifth-largest (Illinois), did not make data available.

Who wasn't counted?

People like Levi Derby, who hanged himself in his grandfather's garage in Illinois on April 5, 2007. He was haunted, says his mother, Judy Caspar, by an Afghan child's death. He had handed the girl a bottle of water, and when she came forward to take it, she stepped on a land mine.

When Derby returned home, he locked himself in a motel room for days. Caspar saw a vacant stare in her son's eyes. A while later, Derby was called up for a tour of Iraq. He didn't want to kill again. He went AWOL and finally agreed to a dishonorable discharge.

Derby was not in the VA system, and Illinois did not send in data on veteran suicides to the VA.

Experts have no doubt that people are being missed in the national counting of veteran suicides. Luana Ritch, the veterans and military families coordinator in Nevada, helped publish an extensive report on that state's veteran suicides.
read more here

They got the "tidal wave" part right since all the numbers we've been seeing are higher and faster than what was happening when Vietnam veterans came home. The most troubling thing is, now that "everything" is being done to prevent suicides, no one seems to be asking why the numbers are worse than ever.

Every meeting I have with veterans groups we have a totally different conversation going on from what the press seems interested in and frankly, we're disgusted. If they are not going to get the facts right, not willing to take the time to check what real history has taught, then we'd rather they go back to reporting on the latest celebrity scandal. They seem to know a lot more about their lives than they do veterans lives.

As bad as all of this is the shocking truth is, we've been down this road before and they never fixed the VA, never fixed the military properly because reporters walked away when they could have stayed on the story to make sure it was fixed the right way.

In May 2009 I wrote this about Comprehensive Soldier Fitness they have been pushing producing higher attempted as well as completed suicides.

If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.

So why do they keep getting it wrong and Wounded Times keeps getting it right? Maybe if they finally get it right then they will understand we're talking about 55 veterans a day not wanting to live one more day. That is the reported 22 a day plus the number of attempted suicides they want to forget about.