Why didn't suicide awareness groups care sooner...or more?

UPDATE Billions of dollars a year go into "raising awareness" and all these years later, this is the outcome! Yet people still write checks to support that instead of people actually doing the work to change the outcome.

This is what they paid for!

Suicide rate up 33% in less than 20 years, yet funding lags behind other top killers

Suicide rates are up 33% in the U.S., yet funding lags behind that of all other top causes of death — leaving suicide research in its "infancy."

read more on USA Today 

Shocking suicide awareness happened 22 times this year

Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 2, 2018

When you need to know how to get to somewhere, you plug in the addresses from where you are to where you want to be. 

Let's say you needed to go from Lake Nona VA Hospital to Tampa VA.

What would happen if this is all you got for directions?

It tells you how long it will take, how many miles, and even how much it will cost in fuel, but the rest is up to you to figure out. Not very helpful is it? You are still lost without a clue how to get to where you want to go.

Yet, as with directions, details should matter regarding anything important to know.

All across the country there are people doing everything possible to "raise awareness" that veterans are committing suicide. Much like the missing directions, they are missing important details.

The first thing is, they are missing an explanation on what their goal is. What is the point of raising awareness something is happening, if they do not understand the extent of how many times it happens? If they do not offer anything of value to change the outcome? If they did not take the subject seriously enough to learn how much they did not bother to learn in the first place?

In 2006, Doug Barber of the Ohio National Guard committed suicide. Montana National Guard soldier Chris Dana was doing suicide awareness. He committed suicide in 2007. He was due to be discharged under "other than honorable" kick to the curb. He would have been one of the over 2 million without honorable discharges that were not even worth mentioning in the numbers left out.

In 2008 the National Guard was doing "suicide prevention" followed by more years, but while some have been "prevented" far too many had succeeded.

That gives you an idea that it is happening all over the country. But when you do a Google Search on "veteran suicide awareness" you get 10,700,000 results.

Why weren't all of these "awareness" groups paying attention all along? Wasn't it important enough when the VA said it was 18 a day? Wasn't it important enough when the VA said it was 20 a day at the same time they said the number of veterans living in the country dropped by millions?

More than a number

Wasn't it important enough during all these years before they became "aware" of what they decided to make it their mission?

Most of the "awareness" groups left out the fact that the majority of veterans committing suicide, the known number anyway, had been over the age of 50 and yes, committing suicide before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.


Most of the groups still leave out the fact that while they failed to change the outcome, veterans keep committing suicide in very public ways to make sure the public knows what the truth is.

So far this year, veterans made sure their names were known and their deaths could not be covered up or forgotten about. Each one of them had a name. It happened 22 times this year...so far.