When will the VA and DOD admit the awful truth?
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
December 5, 2018
Yet again, a report came out about how bad it is for our veterans when they come home. Younger veterans are committing suicide in higher percentages, but the facts are missing.
The awful truth is they did not just fail this year, or last year, or five years ago, or even a decade ago. They failed for over 4 of them.
Billions spent every year and billions made by businesses and charities making a profit off of suicides. That should have been a clue but contracts continued to be written and paid for, along with funerals.
Police end up having to respond to someone finding a dead body, as well as respond when one of them is in a mental health crisis and someone called to get them help, only to have to draw their weapons against a veteran they came to help. That happened at least every week in 2017.
This year, there were 22 public suicides where veterans ended their private hell while making a point to let people be aware of what they had driven them to that point. Hoping like hell that someone would pay attention and do something before another veteran lost their life to suicide.
They saw more and more kicked out of the military. 2,300,000 at last count, right after more speeches about how the DOD claimed they were ready to help them heal.
Billions spent on "prevention training" that every member of the military had to take, yet every branch, every rank, every sex, every age group, lives though combat but dies afterwards by their own hands.
We see National Guards and Reservists, return home without a clue they can heal, so they lose hope before they even try to take control of their lives again.
How much are we willing to see while so many are oblivious to the charade? What expert has been fired for incompetence? What business has had to pay back the money they made off what they failed to deliver on? What charity has been held accountable for passing a slogan off as anything but something to benefit themselves?
It isn't as if they had no way of knowing.
Here is a direct quote from Wounded Times posted on May 29, 2009 about how it should have been known that if the DOD pushed resilience training, suicides would increase.
If you promote this program the way Battlemind was promoted, count on the numbers of suicides and attempted suicides to go up instead of down. It's just one more deadly mistake after another and just as dangerous as sending them into Iraq without the armor needed to protect them.
Yes, I predicted all this because I paid attention. I read reports and I listened to the veterans. No, I was not foolish enough to think the DOD or any of the "experts" would ever listen to someone like me, so not shocked this was ignored. The shocking thing is, they still have not figured it out!!!
It didn't matter that the experts over at RAND Corp investigated this "training" in 2013 and showed why it would not work. Not bad enough that in 2012, suicides hit over 500, or even bad enough they have remained an average of 500 a year since then. It was not even bad enough for them to grasp the concept these men and women were ready to die to save someone else, but did not seek help to save their own lives.
No, none of it was bad enough and today, we have a report where the VA and the DOD still say they have no clue!
Rising Suicide Rates Among Younger Veterans Trigger Alarm Bells at VA
Military.com
By Richard Sisk
December 4, 2018
Suicide rates among veterans 34 and younger have spiked in the last two years, leading the Department of Veterans Affairs to focus more on the 18-to-34-year-old age group than civilian programs for suicide prevention do, a top VA official said Tuesday.
She said another factor that has emerged in analyzing recent statistics has been the suicide rate among National Guard and Reserve veterans who never deployed to a combat zone.
Nearly four of the 20 veteran suicides a day were among National Guard and Reserve members who may have experienced trauma in national disaster duty, but were never in a combat zone, she added.
The number of suicides by veterans of all generations averages 22 each day. But "when we break down the numbers, the national numbers for veterans suicides, we're seeing an increased rate within 18-to-34-year-olds," said Dr. Keita Franklin, the VA's national director of suicide prevention.read the rest here
The thing to pay close attention to is this part
Franklin, who previously served as the Pentagon's Defense Suicide Prevention Office director, also noted that her civilian counterparts in suicide prevention are not facing the same rates of female suicides. "The fact that the female [veteran] rate is 1.8 times higher than their non-veteran counterpart is something we're concerned about."I won a damn award back in 2008 for a video I did about National Guards and Reservists trying to deal with PTSD! So, if I knew, then why the hell didn't they know and do something about it? Like maybe what people like me had been doing for decades?
Did anyone ask her about how suicides increased within the military and in the veterans' community and they still do not know why? Did anyone ask how it is that after over a decade of "efforts" by the DOD and the VA, this is the outcome?
This is from the DOD up to June of this year.
Did anyone ask how it is there were thousands of "awareness raisers" running around the country collected over a billion per year and the suicides still happen even though the veterans are fully aware of all of it?
It is time for us to demand answers, since Congress won't and reporters will not. How much longer are we going to all all of this to go on? When do we actually stand up and fight for the men and women who fight all of our battles?
I am tired of having to try to explain all of this to families when it is too late to do them any good, and then have some "experts" say they still do not know what the hell to do!!! We've known for over 4 decades! When will they? They won't as long as we just let them get away with saying whatever they want.
HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE!
