John McCain Prevented Suicide Prevention Before He Supported It?

Excuse me but after reading what John McCain wrote, I had to rush to the bathroom. Sorry but it was very hard to keep down much at all after this.

McCain: Clay Hunt Act addresses war's invisible wounds
Arizona Daily Star
Senator John McCain
February 4, 2015

Every day in America, approximately 22 U.S. military veterans commit suicide. That’s 8,000 veterans dying each year.

These heartbreaking facts only underscore the mismanagement of suicide prevention resources and mental health care treatment by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, a crisis exposed to the nation though the scandal of denied and delayed care that first began at the Phoenix VA last year.

I am proud that the U.S. Senate took an important step to improve suicide prevention services for our veterans by unanimously passing the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act this week. This bipartisan legislation, which I introduced along with Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., will enhance existing veteran suicide programs and offer new resources to help veterans receive the support and care they so desperately need.

The legislation, which had previously passed in the House and which the president is expected to sign, is named in honor of Clay Hunt, a Marine veteran who committed suicide after struggling with the invisible wounds of war. Clay, a Texas native, enlisted in the Marine Corps in May 2005 and deployed to Anbar province, near Fallujah, in January 2007.
read more here if you have to

OK, had enough of that. Is this the same guy who denied there was a problem? Is this the same Senator who said that a suicide prevention bill was "over reach" and they didn't need something like it in Arizona?

It was about peer support for soldiers coming home. It was the Coleman Bean Act and it was blocked by Senator John McCain.

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This was in 2010!

Rep. Holt: Sen. McCain Objected To My Military Suicide Prevention Bill Amanda Terkel HuffPost Reporting Become WASHINGTON — In 2008, a young sergeant named Coleman S. Bean took his life. After completing his first tour of duty in Iraq, he had come home and been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nevertheless, he was deployed to Iraq a second time. Bean had sought treatment for PTSD but as a member of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), he found fewer resources available to him than to veterans and active-duty members.

In April, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) introduced legislation named after the late soldier meant to provide more resources for suicide prevention to Reserve members. The House in May incorporated it into the National Defense Authorization Act for 2011, but it was stripped from the final version, and Holt is pointing the finger at the lead Republican negotiator on the Senate legislation, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

“Twice now, the Senate has stripped this legislation from our defense bill,” Holt told The Huffington Post Tuesday. “It’s hard to understand why. I know for a fact, because he told me, that Sen. McCain doesn’t support it. Whether he’s the only one, I don’t know. But there was no effort to try to improve the language or negotiate changes; it was just rejected, and I think that is not only bad policy, but it’s cruel. It’s cruel to the families that are struggling with catastrophic mental health problems.” “He [McCain] said having these counselors check in with the Reservists every few months this way overreaching,” continued Holt, relaying a phone conversation he had had with the senator. “I asked him in what sense it was overreaching. Surely he didn’t think there wasn’t a problem, did he? I must say I don’t understand it.”

Who was Coleman Bean?

Coleman Bean was a lot of things to a lot of people. He was a son, a brother, a soldier, and to seemingly everyone who knew him, a good friend. He was someone they could count on to be there, in times of need and in happy times.

When he took his life on Sept. 6, he left those who knew him in shock. But he also left them with 25 years of cherished memories, the kind that could only come from a fun and thoughtful kid who became a loving, caring young man. It's Coleman's indelible character, and not the way he left, that his East Brunswick family — his parents Greg and Linda, younger brother Paddy and older brother Nick — will always hold on to.

Greg Bean, who is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers, knows how he'll recall his middle son. Most prominent in his mind is the memory of Coleman stopping by unannounced the night before he died.

"I was sitting here watching TV, and he poked his face in the dining room window and made a funny face at me," Greg recalled, adding that Coleman, living in South River after returning from his second tour in Iraq, had been dropping over for dinner often, knowing Greg was on leave from work and was cooking a lot.

"He came in and said, 'What'd you make for dinner?' I said, 'I didn't know you were coming, so I didn't make enough for you.' So he made a triple-decker peanut butter sandwich and chips, and sat here and talked baby talk to my new dog, who he had just fallen in love with. … But I'm going to remember that night, because he was just happy and joking, and we made plans to go to the movies the next day and to the gym together on Monday. … I've got a million memories; we went through pictures the other day, and all of them bring back lots and lots of memories, but the one I'm gonna keep with me is just the way he was the day before he died."

In the early hours of the next morning, the family would learn, Coleman got into a one-car accident in West Long Branch, was hospitalized briefly, returned home to his apartment in South River and shot himself. His family and friends would react with shock and sadness, and also with anger that he would leave them this way.

Greg Bean's anger is also directed at the U.S. Army. After Coleman returned from nearly a year in Iraq in 2004, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for issues including extreme anxiety attacks and depression. Despite the diagnosis, the Army sent him back to the war in 2007.

"He had gone to the V.A. and seen a bunch of people [at] the Lyons campus. … He was diagnosed with PTSD and some other troubling issues, just lingering issues from Iraq," his father said. "The problem is that the V.A. doesn't really have anything to do directly with the Army. When he got called back, the Army said, 'Well, we don't care what the V.A. says about you. If you want a deferment from that, you have to get it from an Army psychiatrist.' "

Coleman feared that if he went to an Army psychiatrist, he'd spend the next deployment cleaning latrines or some other unwanted duty.

"The fact that he was diagnosed with [PTSD] didn't have any impact on him being deployed a second time. I think that's wrong. I think that's horrible that a soldier could be seeing a Veterans Administration doctor and that carries no weight with our Army," Greg said. Remembering a hero.
Family and friends mourn the loss of Coleman Bean, 25, Brian Donahue, Sentinel Staff Writer, 9/17/2008

You can read the rest because the link is still active. Unfortunately the link John McCain has to history has been broken for many years.

By 2012 this was the news out of Arizona

"The rate of suicide among military veterans in Arizona is more than double the civilian rate. Advocates say veterans need more than benefits when returning from war. The average veteran suicide rate in Arizona from 2005 through 2011 is almost 43 deaths per 100,000 people. That’s according to data compiled by News21, a national reporting project based out of Arizona State University. And the rate should increase as more veterans return home."

So how is it that Clay Hunt mattered so many years after other veterans didn't?