Why Aren't Canadians Focusing on Their Own Veterans Committing Suicide?

I am on vacation/staycation and this was not a great way to wake up this morning. My email opened with a link to a report on the "22 Pushup" stunt and I debated on opening it or not. Now I wish I just trashed it.

This is from Canada. Pretty much shows that it is easier to just do what is popular than do what works. Hillbilly Burlesque will feature this "22 Push Up National Challenge." 

"PUSHUP CHALLENGE: Country singer-songwriter Jessie Tylre Williams will be entertaining July 22 at Memorial Park during the 22 Push-up National Challenge. Williams, known for the album This Road, says she’s just as happy working with Manitoba Pilates, Advantage Conditioning and other fitness centres to start conversations going about post-traumatic stress disorder, and to eliminate the stigma attached to it."

But those are not the numbers of veterans killing themselves in Canada. Those are the "reported" numbers of veterans committing suicide in the US 2012 VA Suicide Report. 

The other thing that no one is talking about are the ages of the veterans committing suicide. I actually read news reports with "22 a day" and post-9-11 veterans. Well here are the facts on that.

You would have known that if reporters managed to add in facts when they do articles on something as serious as veterans surviving combat but not able to survive long after the danger to their lives was supposed to have ended.


This stuff does not work and the folks behind it make no attempt to even claim to be doing anything about changing the outcome on US veterans committing suicide. They are all about talking about the "problem" they felt no need to become educated on. Ya! In other words, like the Lifelock commercial, they are not going anything about the problem, they are monitoring it. They are not even really doing that when it seems they must have forgotten there is an actual report about the number they raise money to make people aware of.

To read it being spread out in Canada, as well as other nations, proves that too few are actually taking any of this seriously enough and reducing lives down to number that are not real.

Canada has a lot less veterans to worry about, so maybe their numbers are just not as headline grabbing as the US.

At least 54 Canadian military members have committed suicide since 2014 was a headline from the beginning of 2017 but in 2016, there was this report.

Suicide toll reveals how system failed Canada's soldiers and veterans

The 31 fallen are part of a larger troubling statistic. A continuing Globe and Mail investigation has uncovered that at least 70 soldiers and veterans died by suicide after returning from the Afghanistan operation – nearly one-third higher than the 54 revealed by the newspaper one year ago.

Apparently Canada isn't sure about how many veterans they are losing to suicide. This is all very depressing since Canada has taken the lead on treating their police officers and firefighters for PTSD, far beyond what the US has done.

Reminder, those are percentages, and not numbers from the VA on that chart. Notice how much they have changed? That is because they really haven't other than the rate of female veterans is higher now than it was in 2001.

Why do the challenge to raise awareness when no nation has actually lived up to the fact they were challenged when the first reports came out?