40,000 suicides annually, yet America simply shrugs

Gregg Zoroya wrote a huge piece on what has been happening all over the country as more and more people end their lives by suicide. Sometimes we know how their stories end when families understand it is not something to be ashamed of. Most of them are trying to make enough of a difference they can spare someone else from going through the same kind of pain. For others, they want fundamental change to happen and the talk out of Washington to produce more than words.

Zoroya wrote "40,000 suicides annually, yet America simply shrugs" and I bet he wrote it so they begin to give a damn.

When I didn't know what was going on, I didn't care. I grew up during a time of great change in the way we live. On the end of the baby boom generation we had TV sets but no remote controls. We had an antenna on top of the roof and rabbit ears on a small TV with about 5 channels.

By the 70's one of my jobs used a CRT and a dot matrix printer. TV's were adapting to new technology in the 80's and I was working for a cable company in customer service. My husband worked as a service tech. I grew up surrounded by veterans but didn't know anything about Vietnam. I had a desire to learn, so I went to the library as often as I could.

By the 90's homes started to have computers. The whole world opened up. We were able to discover answers within seconds while wearing our pajamas and bunny slippers instead of going to the library.

That ended up leading me to site after site dedicated to telling the stories of our veterans.

Some think all of this is new because they never heard of it before. Instead of wanting to know more, they walk away. It is just too hard to hear the news, hear their stories, understand their pain just enough they actually feel responsible enough to do something about helping people live.

There is only one reason for suicide. The loss of hope the pain they feel will end any other way. That hasn't changed. It is even lonelier for them while folks walk around with cell phone connected to the world by the palm of their hands. We know more faster than during any other time but we have also failed more people by avoiding them, their pain, their need for our time or the simpleness of a hug.

You have a choice right here, right now. Either go off and clean your house, go shopping or turn on one of the mindless reality TV shows some writer scripted or you can read this article and actually learn about the reality that is happening to over 40,000 families every year.

If you don't care now, then you will only have yourself to blame when it happens to someone you know. Then it will be personal to you. Then you will know what it feels like. Then you will want to know why someone didn't do something before it happened in your world. You really won't need to ask the question because you'll know you didn't try when it happened to someone else.

40,000 suicides annually, yet America simply shrugs

THERE'S A SUICIDE IN THE USA EVERY 13 MINUTES.

USA Today
Gregg Zoroya

Army Capt. Justin Fitch, center, embraces Paul Carew, a veteran's advocate and trauma counselor, during a stop on a benefit march led by Fitch.
(Photo: Josh T. Reynolds, for USA TODAY)

Justin Fitch’s race
'MAYBE I CAN INSPIRE OTHER PEOPLE'
There is a sense for some that time is short and too many are at risk. A new World Health Organization study estimates that globally, there is a suicide every 40 seconds.

Urgency is all Army Capt. Justin Fitch thinks about. Time is running out for him personally, and he says there is too much left to do to stop suicides.

The 32-year-old commander of a headquarters unit at the Army's Soldier, Research, Development and Engineering Center in Natick, Mass., nearly succumbed to suicidal urges during his first combat deployment to Iraq seven years ago.

A combination of depression, loss of sleep and combat stress left him alone one day with his M-4 rifle in his shipping-container sleeping quarters.

"It was at the point where you have a gun up to your head, you can taste the carbon of a barrel in your mouth, and the only thing that stands between me and being a statistic is 4.5 pounds of trigger pressure," he remembers.

Fitch hesitated. He later reached out to a counselor on the base, and with the help of medication and therapy, he began coping with his depression. "It took time," he says.

Today, he cannot recover from colon cancer diagnosed in 2012 that doctors declared terminal last year. In June, they said he had only months left. Faced with his own mortality, Fitch consulted his wife, Samantha Wolk, and reflected on the 22 veteran suicides occurring each day. He chose to devote his remaining time to prevent others from committing suicide.

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Army Capt. Justin Fitch, who’s facing terminal cancer, wants to help other veterans facing depression and suicidal thoughts. Josh T. Reynolds, for USA TODAY