If You Lost Someone To Military Suicide, Be Aware of Who Is Responsible

What You Didn't Know Was Their Fault
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 16, 2015

If you lost someone to suicide tied to military service, you may be blaming yourself. You may wonder what you did wrong, running the "what" "if" "but" "when" searching for reasons why someone you loved survived combat but couldn't live back at home.

I have news for you. It isn't your fault. You need to know what has been going on all along.

Why do we pay folks to be in office if they never fix anything? They do a lot of talking but when problems get worse, they hold hearings and complain about what happened. None of them seem to remember they were supposed to fix what was wrong.


A great example of this came in 2011, 10 years after 9-11, 3 years after the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act was signed and a year before suicides within the military broke all records.

This is what they knew a year before but the result was more dead by suicides.

SEPTEMBER 9, 2011
Military Suicide Prevention Programs
Military leaders testified about their efforts to prevent suicides and reduce the stigma of mental health care for active duty members. They noted that suicide rates had decreased in the last year, but emphasized there areas for considerable improvement in military mental health care.

"Military officials said troop suicides have decreased in the last year but there is still work to be done." but as we saw a year later, the numbers broke records. What good does it do to have members of Congress holding hearings if what they end up doing produces more harm than was done when they did nothing?
Jonathan Woodson, Defense Department Health Affairs Assistant Secretary said "We continue to seek the best minds" after saying suicides had gone up within the Armed Forces "steadily increased over the last 10 years" and over the last 3 years there were more members of the military committing suicide than within the civilian population.

They were taking steps to "identify, treat and prevent suicides." They were studying 90,000 active duty soldiers. Yet after all this, when numbers went up, nothing was changed. They continued the same programs that failed topped off with spending more money on the same programs.

Navy Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta said that in 2011 they were seeing an increase in the number of suicides. They were working on the stigma and assuring Sailors seeking help was a sign of strength. They started a peer support system in 2008 but while results did not prove those efforts worked, they continued them.

Marine Lt. General Robert Milstead said that "In 2010 we had an almost 30% decrease in Marine Corps suicides from 52 to 37 and so far this year we're tracking lower" but again, saying they were training Marines to seek help early did not turn out to be working.

Air Force Lt. General Darrell Jones said "Despite our best efforts regrettably 56 Airmen, officers and enlisted and civilian combined" then went on to talk about their efforts.

Yet what we saw were more suicides in every branch. All of them talked about pushing "resilience" even though there was absolutely more devastation for those they said they were paying attention to.

No one had to pay a dime back. No one had to apologize to the families. No one had to lose their jobs. Members of Congress got to get away with being able to go back to their home states and take credit for what they "did" for our troops because no one paid attention to what they let be done to them in the first place.

This was what followed that hearing.

According to AFMES data as of 31 March 2013, there were 319 suicides among Active component Service members and 203 among Reserve component Services members (Reserve [n = 73]; National Guard [n = 130].

As bad as those numbers were in 2012, there was another part of the story that few talk about.

For 2012, all Services achieved 100% submission compliance. A total of 841 Service members had one or more attempted suicides reported in DoDSER for CY 2012. Below we provide summary statistics on several variables for all DoD suicide and suicide attempt DoDSERs.

And this is what they knew even before all that.

Grace Napolitano, D-CA 38th Mrs. NAPOLITANO. Mr. Chairman, today I rise to address the ranking member of the House Appropriation's Committee on Defense, Mr. Dicks, and also the chair in a colloquy on the critical need to improve the recruitment, retention, and competitive compensation of the mental health professionals who can work with our Iraq and Afghanistan military servicemen and -women.

Since 2001, 2,103 military members have died by suicide. And one in five servicemembers currently suffer from post-traumatic stress and/or major depression. We must ensure that an adequate number of mental health professionals are available to treat our soldiers.

Mental health professionals must be retained by providing adequate pay and competitive benefits that are also available in the private sector. It is our duty and responsibility to our wounded warriors that we ensure their mental health services are secure and available when and where needed.

I am submitting for the Record an article from the Army Times dated April 7, 2011, regarding the Senate Appropriations Committee Defense Subcommittee meeting of April 6 and quoting Army Surgeon General Lieutenant General Schoomaker, who stressed the severe lack of mental health professionals in the military, and his concern about retention, especially in the rural areas. The article states, ``Congress has been pressing the military health system to add more psychiatric doctors, nurses and social workers for several years. That has prompted the services to add about 1,500 full-time mental health professionals since 2006--a 70 percent increase.''

The article further says, ``But demand has continued to outpace that growth. Active-duty troops and their families were referred to off-base civilian mental health care professionals nearly 4 million times in 2009, roughly double the number of off-base referrals in 2006, military data show."

``The dramatic increase in military suicides during the past several years has added urgency to congressional concerns. At the April 6 hearing, all three military surgeons general told lawmakers about efforts to improve training, recruiting and retention of mental health professionals.'' [Page: H4716]

Senator Mikulski has suggested military training may be uniquely important because some civilian doctors and social workers have trouble understanding the troops' problems and mindset.

I am also submitting for the Record a witness statement of July 14, 2011, from the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Veterans Affairs, where the Deputy Director of Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Division, Jacob Gadd, expressed the challenges of hiring and retaining quality mental health specialists. Our servicemembers should not have to wait one more day for the help they deserve.

As cochair of the Congressional Mental Health Care Caucus, I have met with many key military leaders to learn what the most critical issues are in addressing mental health services for our military men and women. I've repeatedly been informed that there have been woefully inadequate numbers of mental health professionals available to care for our men and women.

Congress has a responsibility to see that our soldiers and veterans have the resources for quality care. Because this quality of care is dependent on the quantity of behavioral health specialists trained in war, PTS, we must successfully recruit and retain to work with our men and women who fight to ensure our precious daily freedoms.

The legislation before you today provides $32.3 billion for the defense health program and military family programs, with $125 million of this going towards research of traumatic brain injury and psychological health treatment, hopefully to also include hyperbaric treatment research.

We must insist on accountability that adequately trained behavioral health professionals are on hand when and where needed. I would like to work with the ranking member to obtain from the Department of Defense a detailed outline on their efforts for each military service--Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, et cetera--to recruit, retain, and formulate the competitive salaries and benefits that will keep behavioral health specialists serving our men and women who have given so much to protect our freedoms.

We place them in harm's way. It is our duty and obligation to ensure the best care is given to them.

I yield to the ranking member.

So, no, it isn't your fault as all.  They also said they were teaching families about PTSD and telling you what you needed to know.