Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
February 15, 2013
The numbers released on military suicides from last year were not the shocking part.
The numbers are from Air Force Times
Army 351-296=55
Navy 59-46=7
Air Force 59-55=4
Marines 48-45=3
The shocking part is no one has been held accountable since 2008 and no one ever will be unless the public demands it.
The headlines are not impressive at all considering every branch has also had a reduction in enlisted personnel and the rate of younger veterans committing suicide has gone up. 517 revised from 2012?
This is from 2009 with military leaders. House Armed Service Subcommittee held the hearing.
As you can see, the numbers went up after this hearing even though they made it sound as if they were doing everything possible to reduce suicides.
This is from 2010 with General Carroll Air Force Vice Chief of Staff
This is a year after training was pushed across the military. The number of Air Force Suicides, Post Traumatic Stress and TBI were increasing. As you can see, they increased even more after "addressing" the problems.
One more thing to consider when any military brass talks about how non-deployed forces committed suicide is the simple fact, civilians do not receive mental health evaluations but enlisted personnel do. They were tested before they enlisted. Either the testing is inadequate and cannot discover underlying psychological problems or the problems are in fact caused by the military.
Nice speeches did not save lives. Good intentions did not save lives. When the military decided to do more to prevent suicides and encourage troops to seek help for PTSD but ended up with these terrible results, they should have changed but they didn't. They just pushed the same programs harder.
JULY 2, 2010
Veterans and Military Mental Health
National Institute on Mental Health 2010 Convention Officials from the Defense and Veterans Departments took part in a discussion looking at the range of mental health and counseling services available to returning war veterans. Among the topics they addressed were evaluation methods, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and congressional initiatives to address to assist veterans. Psychiatric service dogs in the audience were pointed out. Following Colonel Ritchie’s remarks, Vietnam War veteran Ron Morton unexpectedly stepped up to the podium and spoke about soldiers committing suicide and the increase of veterans with AIDS and HIV. He argued that the Veterans Administration is not doing enough for veterans with PTSD. After the panelists' prepared remarks, they responded to audience members' questions.
"We have solutions we're working on" but after listening to Richie, it is clear their solutions did not work. Just look at the numbers above as a reminder.
Richie praised Dr. Ira Katz. Dr. Katz was hiding data that at the time there were 12,000 attempted suicides each year within the VA system. Another good reminder is that the VA cares for only a fraction of the veterans in this country. Less than 4 million out of almost 23 million veterans.
John Bradly of NAMI reminded the audience they had given Katz an award in 2009. That is the same year I resigned from NAMI Veterans Council. Dr. Katz was the focus of a lawsuit by Veterans for Common Sense and documents were uncovered by a Freedom of Information Request.
Sens. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Patty Murray of Washington state said Tuesday that Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's mental health director, withheld crucial information on the true suicide risk among veterans. "Dr. Katz's irresponsible actions have been a disservice to our veterans, and it is time for him to go," said Murray, a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "The No. 1 priority of the VA should be caring for our veterans, not covering up the truth."
That report was from 2008.
Katz said during his address in 2010 that the VA takes care of 24 million veterans but the VA records showed there was less than 4 million receiving VA compensation. Katz's chart showed 7.8 million enrolled in VA healthcare with 5.2 million seen each year and 1.6 million with mental health diagnosis.
That is an important factor in attempting to discover how many veterans attempt suicides and how many are not being counted.
Was it a serious problem in 2008? Yes, like the story of Josh Barber,
FORT LEWIS, Wash. — Josh Barber, former combat soldier, parked outside the Army hospital here one morning last August armed for war.
A cook at the dining facility, Barber sat in his truck wearing battle fatigues, earplugs and a camouflage hood on his head. He had an arsenal: seven loaded guns, nearly 1,000 rounds of ammunition, knives in his pockets. On the front seat, an AK-47had a bullet in the chamber.
The "smell of death" he experienced in Iraq continued to haunt him, his wife says. He was embittered about the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that crippled him, the Army's failure to treat it, and the strains the disorder put on his marriage.
Despite the firepower he brought with him, Barber, 31, took only one life that day. He killed himself with a shot to the head.
"He went to Fort Lewis to kill himself to prove a point," Kelly Barber says. " 'Here I am. I was a soldier. You guys didn't help me.' "
Barber's suicide is part of a larger story — the record number of soldiers and combat veterans who have killed themselves in recent years, at a time when the Pentagon has stretched deployments for combat troops to meet President Bush's security plans in Iraq. In 2007, the Army counted 115 suicides, the most since tracking began in 1980. By October 2008, that record had been surpassed with 117 soldier suicides. Final numbers for 2008 have not been released.
This post would never end if I kept going but after tracking news reports from across the country since 2007, there is enough proof on Wounded Times that what the DOD has been doing has not helped keep them alive. It has caused too many to not want to live anymore.
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