Veterans commit suicide in public hoping we'll pay attention

Veterans Commit Suicide in Public 
Combat PTSD
Kathie Costos
July 21, 2018

Thursday a friend of mine, Sgt. Dave Matthews of Remember the Fallen covered what the National News used to think was important. The shocking number of veterans committing suicide in pubic! Yes, in public. It happened at least 12 times since March of 2018, and this is just July.

Who hears veterans scream before public suicides?

Dave read about John Michael Watts setting himself on fire in front of the Georgia state Capitol. He was furious that it happened but shocked the press did not give his scream for help the attention he deserved. We did. I had it up 3 hours after Military Times covered it.

Dave called me after he saw it and wanted to do a show on his death. I asked Dave why just him and not all the others committing suicide in public. He was shocked and had a hard time getting his head around the others when I sent him the link to the post.

It took me about an hour to put it together. After all, I was limiting the search down to this year but with over 29,000 articles, there are far more times when veterans took this one last step of being heard.

So who heard them before they ended their lives this way?

When the national news reporters are too busy for those who serve this nation, none of us should be shocked when a veteran decides to turn in the blank check they wrote to this country. The "up to and including" their lives was never supposed to be about the nation turning our backs on them.

We settle all too easily for what gets the image of them of them lying dead out of our heads.

We settle for slogans and support the "cause" of people raising awareness that it is happening but refuse to support the people working to change the outcome. That was abundantly made clear when the Federal Trade Commission decided to put an end to all the bogus charities taking advantage of veterans for their own incomes. 

We settle for the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs using a slogan of "one is too many" but never pay attention to the reports they release showing nothing has changed.

We settle for members of Congress getting their names on Bills that have done very little since 2007 when they passed the Joshua Omvig Suicide Prevention Act and the number of veterans committing suicide has not changed since then.

As a matter of fact the number of military suicides went up after Congress became "aware" of what was going on.

If anyone really wants to know why veterans are facing off with members of law enforcement every week, committing murder-suicides in every state, and taking the lives that survived service, all they have to do is listen. Listen to the screams of those who all of the above never paid attention to before it was too late!