Why wasn't the press on suicide watch?

Widow of U.S. Soldier: VA Turned Away Husband Before His Suicide
FOX News

Just after news broke that President Obama summoned VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to the White House, Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. brought us the heartbreaking story of Army Staff Sgt. Kevin Hartbarger. His widow, Barbra Hartbarger, explained that her husband tragically took his own life in Aug. 2012 after a long bout with depression.

Hartbarger had been treated from 2004 until his death by VA doctors, but Barbra said he kept getting referred to new psychiatrists and called the VA a "pill dispensary."

"No one doctor ever actually followed him completely. It would not be unusual to see two or three different psychiatrists each year. So every time he went in he would need to retell his story of what he was experiencing with that new doctor. And they would change medications randomly, so there was no continuity in his care," she recalled.
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I wondered why the press wasn't on suicide watch in 2007 when they should have been. After all, it isn't as if any of these reports were secret. Every death on this post came from reports too many ignored. There are plenty of them, far too many of them, but as you just read, each one is too many for their families but not too many for the military and the VA to actually change what they do.

1/25/2007 JUSTIN BAILEY 27 CALIFORNIA OVERDOSE Iraq war veteran Justin Bailey checked himself in to the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center just after Thanksgiving.Among the first wave of Marines sent into battle, the young rifleman had been diagnosed since his return with posttraumatic stress disorder and a groin injury. Now, Bailey acknowledged to his family and a friend, he needed immediate treatment for his addiction to prescription and street drugs."We were so happy," said his stepmother, Mary Kaye Bailey, 41. "We were putting all of our faith into those doctors."On Jan. 25, Justin Bailey got prescriptions filled for five medications, including a two-week supply of the potent painkiller methadone, according to his medical records. A day later, he was found dead of an apparent overdose in his room at a VA rehabilitation center on the hospital grounds. He was 27.

Timothy Bowman FORRESTON, Ill. — A year ago on Thanksgiving morning, in the corrugated metal pole barn that housed his family's electrical business, Timothy Bowman put a handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. He had been home from the Iraq war for eight months. Once a fun-loving, life-of-the-party type, Bowman had slipped into an abyss, tormented by things he'd been ordered to do in war. "I'm OK. I can deal with it," he would say whenever his father, Mike, urged him to get counseling. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing a wave of returning veterans such as Bowman who are struggling with memories of a war where it's hard to distinguish innocent civilians from enemy fighters and where the threat of suicide attacks and roadside bombs haunts the most routine mission. Since 2001, about 1.4 million Americans have served in Iraq, Afghanistan or other locations in the war on terror.