In Florida we lost 530 veterans to suicide in 2016

UPDATE SHOCKER 

Florida had more veterans committing suicide than California and the same as Texas!

California
Total 490
18-34 71
35-54 128
55-74 162
75+ 129

Texas
Total 530
18-34 109
35-54 161
55-74 169
75+ 90

Yesterday it was clear that the benefits of suicide awareness went poof with the release of yet another suicide report from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The suicide rate for Veterans ages 18–34 substantially increased from 2005 to 2016. 

• When comparing Veteran suicide rates by age group, Veterans ages 18–34 had the highest suicide rate in 2016, at 45 per 100,000. 

• In 2016, 58.1 percent of Veteran suicides were among Veterans age 55 and older.

For all the stunts and slogans leading people to believe that the number means anything, you now have proof that all of their stunts and ear worm slogans managed to increase the bank accounts for thousands of groups all over the country at the same time left veterans with one message. They have plenty of company if they want to commit suicide.

Suicides among military bomb techs at crisis level
Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal via AP
By: Melissa Nelson Gabriel
September 18, 2018

The foundation does not have an exact number of EOD techs who have taken their own lives, in part because it is often difficult to tell if someone died accidentally or intentionally and also because there is not a good national tracking system. 

Danelle Hackett wanted her Marine husband to focus on the lives he saved disarming IEDs as a military bomb technician during two tours in Iraq.

Maj. Jeff Hackett could only focus on his 16 colleagues who died during the dangerous bomb disposal missions he led from early 2005 through late 2007.

"My husband looked at those guys as his own family, his own sons. Repeatedly losing techs just wore on him and wore him. He blamed himself for every death," Danelle Hackett said.

In June 2010, after a day of drinking at an American Legion Post in Wyoming near the family's home, Jeff Hackett downed a couple more swigs of alcohol, said "cheers" and shot and killed himself.

Among the highly skilled and elite ranks of military explosive ordnance disposal technicians — the men and women who have been on the front line of the war on terror since Sept. 11, 2001 — suicide is a growing concern.

"It is literally an epidemic," said Ken Falke, a former EOD technician and founder of the Niceville-based EOD Warrior Foundation, which supports current and former military EOD techs and their families.

Air Force Sgt. Chris Ferrell, a 32-year-old EOD tech who has had many combat deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 13 years, has attempted suicide four times.

He has a sleeve of tattoos on his arm with 26 shaded-in stars, each one represents a friend he has lost on the battlefield.
read more here

Think about what their jobs were in combat. Constantly putting their lives between bombs an others they served with. That is how much the lives of others mattered to them.

Yet, no matter what price they paid doing their jobs, they are left paying a much higher price out of service because no one told them how to consider their own lives as worthy as those they would have died for.

Now maybe you understand how repulsive it is to constantly hear a number that even they VA said they will no longer use.

Does not highlight the average number of suicides per day, a measure that is commonly misinterpreted, but rather focuses on suicide counts and rates among various populations. 

In Florida we lost 530 veterans to suicide. Of the known suicides, 506 were males and 24 were females. 

Age 18-34 52 suicides

Age 35-54 124 suicides

Age 55-74 204 suicides

Age 75+ 150 suicides.

Since the largest group of veterans in our state are over the age of 50, we need to focus more on these forgotten generations.

Then again, we need to focus more on what we should have learned before it got this bad for those who managed to survive this many years after risking their lives in the military.

How can any of this be taken so lightly that we are allowing people to use a slogan, that has not only been proven to be a false number, but doing more harm than good?

It isn't as if no one knew what was going on all along. Families knew their names but others wanted to reduce them down to a number, then demanded the right to use it as part of their "charity" work. Work? 

Yes, it must be very hard to get groups to pull stunts and get reporters their to cover them, while managing to get the uninformed to donate. Anything, as long as they could not pay attention to the detail...the higher suicide and lower survival rate for our veterans.

The only way to change this is to change what we are doing beginning with the "resilience" training the military has been doing since 2009. 

I am just a regular person and I figured out the harm it would do back in 2009. That should freak out anyone with half a brain because the people in charge had no problem at all spending billions on it every year no matter what the results proved.

Kathie Costos DiCesare
Published on Oct 21, 2012
There are many things that keep getting missed when we talk about Combat and PTSD. This is to clear up the biggest one of all.

What is courage and how does it link to being "mentally tough" so that you can push past what you were told about "resiliency" training. Chaplain Kathie "Costos" DiCesare of Wounded Times Blog tries to explain this in interview done by Union Squared Studios. 

That will spare the new generation going into the military. As for those who are already in and those who left, we need to change the conversation from reminding them of how many others gave up and start letting them know they can heal!

They do not have to surrender to what they already survived!