Less PTSD Veterans Alive To Worry About

Died as a result of their service and our neglect
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 29, 2016

Stop "doing something" while pretending it is better than nothing. The results are now worse than ever. 

The latest suicide report from the VA proves that.  In 1999 their research showed 20 suicides a day but we had about 7 million more veterans in this country.  Too few had heard the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder even though they were living with it.  

Now the report says there are 20 a day with less veterans alive to worry about.

"Honor and remember their sacrifice" sounds good and for many, that is the truth.  "Later died as a result of their service" is the part that shows far too few actually do it. Had they cared enough then my generation would not be seeing the same thing we went through for the younger veterans and families just like ours.

It is bad enough being forgotten in all the reporting done across the country as they attempt to tell the stories of veterans committing suicide and charities lining up to "do something" about all this, only to discover no one is talking about, or doing anything for the majority of the veterans losing the last battle after war. It is even worse to discover that absolutely nothing has been changed by any of it.

When our veterans came home, we suffered in silence.  It wasn't that we didn't want to talk.  It was because no one cared enough to listen.  We didn't give up on the American public and many veterans took the fight to Washington, pushing for and obtaining all the funding for research into the wound all other generations came home with. PTSD is not new and things have hardly improved.

'He went to fight a war over there, then he came back and had to fight another war.'
San Antonio Express News
Martin Kuz

Garza shared little with Mata about the causes of the war within him before his death Sept. 18, when he jumped from a freeway overpass on the city’s northern edge. He clutched two yellow blankets that belonged to his young daughter as he fell to earth.

Mata knew only that he had received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder linked to his two combat tours in Iraq. The second ended in 2005, a full decade before his suicide at age 33, and six years before they began dating.

LAREDO — Sara Mata has followed a morning ritual since marrying Manuel Garza five years ago. She pours two mugs of coffee and sits down beside him to talk about what’s on her mind, musing out loud about their children and families, about happy memories and dreams for the future.

Until last fall, the conversations took place at the kitchen table in their modest apartment on Laredo’s south side, the couple surrounded by the clutter of family life.

Now Mata sits at the foot of her husband’s grave in a city cemetery, shadowed by the anguish of loss. She talks to the white marble headstone that identifies him as an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War. She stays long enough that his coffee turns cold.

“There are so many unanswered questions, so many things I would like to know,” she said. “I ask him when I come here.”

“We veterans are very good at hiding things emotionally.That can be useful in a lot of situations. But the problem with suicide is, you can’t come back to life and see what you’ve done.” Gabriel Lopez

read more here

As you can see, there are things that are in fact worse than nothing. It was easier to be suffering in silence thinking no one knew instead of they just don't care enough.