Put Knowledge Where Your Heart Is

Good Intentions Meaningless Awareness
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 30, 2017

Let us assume the folks raising awareness have good intentions. They probably do not know they are doing more harm than good. Now, let us assume they have no idea they are not even close to the truth. Considering they probably didn't read the reports they keep quoting, it is doubtful they have studied the results of their time.

None of the new groups are interested in older veterans, even though veterans over the age of 50 are 65% of the suicides. Set that fact aside for the moment. 

They seem to think that the suicides they do acknowledge are only among the War on Terror generation. After all, that is all they managed to learn.

So, we'll take a look at what those results have produced.


This is from the report on suicides from the VA that was released last year.

That is the outcome of all the "awareness" folks getting the attention while they truth was silenced. These are the veterans they pay attention to, talk about, post about, take walks for, do pushups for and all the while, this proves it got worse for those veterans.

Just with the numbers from 2012 and 2014, it shows a rise even just from veterans in the VA system. 

18-24 2012 66.3 2014 110.3
25-29 2012 55.9 2014 56.3
30-39 2012 50.8 2014 51.2
40-49 2012 23.5 2014 28.0
50-59 2012 21.8 2014 22.9

If everyone is saying the same thing, then when you tell them the truth, they think you're lying. No matter how hard you try to prove what the truth really is, they won't admit they had no clue or even apologize for the agony it caused.

Awareness "efforts" started about a decade ago. By 2009, more and were doing research. It was not until the VA released the first study putting the number of veteran suicides at 22 a day that it seemed as if everyone wanted to be the one to change the outcome. As this chart shows, it actually got worse, because while the number does not seem changed by much, we lost millions of older veterans.

The next time you are asked to donate to any of these groups or join in on the "effort" think about all that.

If you want to change the outcome on anything, then you need to have some knowledge first or you'll just add to the problem. 

You may want to start to ask some questions.

What are they doing with the money?

Are they focused on all veterans or just some?

Do they know what the real numbers are?

Do they know why some veterans are not included in the studies?

Do they know the percentage of veterans not going to the VA?

Do they know the difference between discharges or how they effect death certificates?

Do they know which states were not part of any of the studies?

The last question to ask is perhaps the most important one of all. If they did not know any of this, then how important were any of these veterans to them?