PolitiFact Not So Factual on Veteran Suicides

When it comes to rating what a politician says, there is a pesky thing called actual research to see if what they claim is true or not. On this one, I rate Politifact mostly lazy.

Kamala Harris slightly off in claim about veterans suicides
Politifact
By Chris Nichols
August 23rd, 2016

"It is unconscionable that 22 veterans take their own lives each day. We must ensure that they have support to adjust to civilian life," Harris, a Democrat, said on Twitter on August 18, 2016.

The VA examined about 55 million veterans records from 1979 through 2014. It found that in 2014, the latest year for which figures are available, 7,403 veterans took their own lives, or an average of about 20 a day.
You can read the rest here

Fact one missed is that within the reports cited is an all too often missed fascinating piece of information.

1999 the VA said there were 20 veterans a day committing suicide.  That was before Afghanistan and Iraq veterans entered into they military and while there were still WWI, WWII, Korean War veterans along with a lot more Vietnam veterans, plus Gulf War veterans. 5 million veterans less to count, the VA said in 2016 there are, yep, 20 a day committing suicide.

(Past articles had 7 million less veterans but the cut off date was before this latest report)

Look at the graph from the VA.

and this is by age

This is how we reached the abysmal finding that the percentage of veteran suicides has in fact gone up. This is after a decade of raising awareness, raising funds to talk about something few actually took the time to understand and a lot of politicians doing a lot of talking about how they will change the outcome when all they have done is repeat what already failed, it looks as if nothing will change.  It won't change until reporters actually tell the truth about what has been going on.  Yet again, a pesky little thing like using a number to make it easy to remember, when history is obliterated.  Hmm, just like the number of lives that could had been saved if we actually held people accountable.

Here is the report from the VA for the 2012 figure where they had the number at "22" and link to the 2016 report where they had the number at "20"

The stunning part on that report is they use the CDC number of suicides at 41,425 but stated rate of suicide from almost every state puts the number of veterans committing suicide at double the civilian population.  Figure that one out?

Here is the link to the 2000 Census 26.4 million veterans

Here is the link to the 2015 Census with 21,369,602 veterans and as you can see the majority of the veterans are over the age of 50 with the largest group, you guess it again, Vietnam veterans.

Where Are America’s Military Veterans Really Thriving?

GUEST POST

Where Are America’s Military Veterans Really Thriving?

Military Storage

by John Egan

From sea to shining sea, about 21.4 million military veterans live across the United States. Whether it’s a 25-year-old veteran who fought in Iraq or a 65-year-old veteran who did battle in Korea, our veterans have succeeded in protecting our freedom.

On an individual basis, away from the front lines, the success of our military veterans can be measured in terms of income, employment and education. In those three categories, many veterans are much better off than their non-veteran counterparts.

In honor of Veterans Day, MilitaryStorage.com combed through data from the U.S. Census Bureau to come up with a list of the 12 U.S. metro areas where veterans are doing the best compared with non-veterans.

To read the list, ranked in descending order, visit the MilitaryStorage.com blog.

John Egan is editor in chief of the Military Storage Station, the MilitaryStorage.com blog. John, A Kansas native, has more than 25 years of experience in journalism, public relations and blogging. MilitaryStorage.com is owned by Austin, Texas-based SpareFoot, an online marketplace which helps people find and book self-storage units online for free.

How Many Veterans In Your State Committed Suicide?

The report of 22 veterans a day committing suicide are infuriating because they are just repeated as all there is to know when the truth is, the number was an average taken from 21 states based on death certificates.
Department of Veterans Affairs Suicide Report

Limitations of Existing Data
Currently available data include information on suicide mortality among the population of residents in 21 states. Veteran status in each of these areas is determined by a single question asking about history of U.S. military service. Information about history of military service is routinely obtained from family members and collected by funeral home staff and has not been validated using information from the DoD or VA. Further, Veteran status was not collected by each state during each year of the project period. Appendix B provides a listing of the availability of Veteran identifiers by state and year.

Further, this report contains information from the first 21 states to contribute data for this project and does not include some states, such as California and Texas, with larger Veteran populations. Information from these states has been received and will be included in future reports.

According to the US Census 2013 estimate, the total population of the US was 316,218,839. There were 21,853,912 veterans in this country with 1,606,758 of them living in Florida. This is my state.

Military, veteran suicides account for nearly one in every four in Florida ... but the numbers don't explain why
Rate is one of the nation's highest
By Clifford Davis
Apr 26, 2014

Tracking Veteran Suicides
Center for Public Integrity
Suicide rate for veterans far exceeds that of civilian population
Jeff Hargarten
Forrest Burnson
Bonnie Campo
Chase Cook
August 30, 2013

Veterans commit suicide at double and sometimes triple the rates of civilian suicides, with the rates varying from state to state. The veteran suicide rate has grown annually at more than double the percentage of the civilian rate.

Suicide rates by state
News21 calculated veteran and civilian suicide rates based on mortality data received from most states. The rate is the average number of suicide deaths per 100,000 people in each state's veteran and adult civilian populations, respectively. Years 2005 to 2011 had the most complete available information.
(Veteran Suicides State Interactive Map)
No data for DC, FL or NE

Veteran suicides Average percentage of all suicides among
veterans between 2005 and 2011.
Percentage of all suicides

AK 19.94%

AL 24.06%

AR 21.56%

AZ 22.6%

CA 18.82%

CO 21.62%

CT 14.42%

DE 16.83%

GA 18.26%

HI 14.79%

ID 24.6%

IL 17.72%

IN 17.2%

IA 20.02%

KS 22.25%

KY 11.71%

LA 18.92%

MA 9.81%

ME 23.02%

MD 17.92%

MI 19.42%

MN 18.61%

MS 19.89%

MO 22.1%

MT 26.43%

NC 19.94%

ND 22.02%

NH 20.58%

NJ 13.96%

NM 21.35%

NV 22.74%

NY 15.27%

OH 20.01%

OK 21.9%

OR 24.09%

PA 20.44%

RI 17.27%

SC 22.51%

SD 20.25%

TN 19.32%

TX 18.57%

UT 16.04%

VA 20.81%

VT 15.17%

WI 19.69%

WA 25.25%

WV 24.39%

WY 21.49%

"The suicide rate among present and former members of the military “is twice as high” as the rate among people who have never served in the military" U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal
What good has it done to talk about suicide awareness all these years? What good has it done to talk about "suicide prevention" when all the stories are about successful suicides? What good has it done for members of congress to sit and listen to families after their hearts have been ripped out when all of this is the outcome of decades of research?

Do we keep raising awareness of the problems without raising awareness of what is working? Do we keep pushing failures or do we start spreading word about what has succeeded?

If the numbers are not enough to bother you, consider this. These folks were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of others. They were not prepared to have their lives put at greater risk by others they were promised help from.