Vietnam: Medal of Honor quest for Maj. George Quamo

A breakthrough in Medal of Honor quest for Maj. George Quamo
Times Union, Albany, N.Y.
By Paul Nelson
Published: August 29, 2016

ALBANY, N.Y. (Tribune News Service) — Friends and family of George Quamo hope two more testimonials — one from a former military medic and another penned by one of his fellow special service members — will bolster the case that the Green Beret from Averill Park deserves a Medal of Honor for his heroism during the Vietnam War.

Maj. George Quamo VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL FUND

Two notarized letters — from William Harris of North Carolina and Richard Mullowney Jr. of Alaska — bring to three the supporting documents that supporters will be submitting to the Defense Department requesting that Quamo be posthumously awarded the nation's highest military honor.

The Army Major who graduated from Averill Park High School in 1958 was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for leading a dangerous helicopter mission in 1968 that rescued 14 Green Berets and dozens of others who were invaded by two North Vietnamese battalions and were pleading for help at the Lang Vei Special Forces Camp in central Vietnam.

Quamo (pronounced Cuomo) died in a plane crash on April 14, 1968.
read more here

VA Reports Attempted Suicides Went Up Too

Before more people decide to raise awareness without reading the report like they did the last time, here is the link to the VA Suicide Report.

Veteran Suicide Facts and Data

But while we're talking about it, notice a few facts. Notice the number of attempted suicides and then notice the numbers in the charts below along with seeing how not much has changed. How about you make folks aware of that fact?

A history of non-fatal suicide attempts is recognized to be among the most robust risk factors for suicide.

Among VHA patients, reports of suicide attempt can be identified through review of external injury codes associated with health services (i.e., obtained from medical records) or from the Suicide Prevention applications Network (SPAN), VHA’s internal suicide event case management and tracking system. As shown in Figure 5, monthly reports of non-fatal suicide attempts based on SPAN data increased between 2012 and 2014, ranging from just over 600 reported attempts in May 2012 to almost 900 in August 2014.

VHA’s health care system includes an increasing number of patients with factors, such as a history of suicide attempts, associated with risk for suicide

Teenager's Life Cut Short By Accident, Soldier's Life Extended By Love

Teen who died following ladder fall donates kidney to veteran
KOMO
by Suzanne Phan
August 26th 2016

SILVERDALE, Wash. (KOMO) - A Kitsap family is preparing to bury their beloved teenage daughter on Saturday, but they find hope and promise that a part of her lives on.

Sixteen-year-old Emily Ramm was a bold, daring, and outspoken teen with big dreams and a lot of ambition, according to her family. Her life was cut short after she fell from a ladder at a construction site at Silverdale Elementary School on Aug. 13.

Loved ones say she was climbing to find higher ground and a better place to watch the meteor shower that night with friends.

KOMO News has heard from a military veteran who received Emily's kidney right after she passed.

"There's no words to describe how grateful I am. For the family, the loss is huge. I can't say thank you enough,” said Daniel Mendoza from his home.
read more here

No Evidence Navy Veteran Entered VA Before Suicide?

No Evidence Help Denied to Vet before Suicide: VA Director
NBC 4 News New York
August 27, 2016

Surveillance video shows that the 76-year-old veteran never entered the medical center before committing suicide in the parking lot, the facility's director says

"While at this time, it appears that the individual did not seek any medical attention we will continue to review additional surveillance cameras near the entrance of our emergency room, and all of our telephone records to see if the individual contacted our facility within the last week," he wrote.

There is no evidence that a former Navy gunner who killed himself earlier this week outside a veterans medical center on Long Island was denied treatment that day, says the facility's director.

Philip Moschitta, director of the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center, states in an Aug. 26 letter to Congressman Lee Zeldin that the facility's preliminary review of the incident uncovered no indication that Peter Kaisen had entered the center before his body was found last Sunday in the parking lot.

"It appears the details of the tragic incident may have been misrepresented in the media coverage," he wrote.
read more here

Idle Gossip Is Not Helping Any Veteran

PTSD Suicide Awareness or Gossip?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 28, 2016

Last night I had the strangest dream, to borrow a line from Simon and Garfunkel. I was at an event for veterans when I came upon a table with a sign saying PTSD Awareness and a picture of a veteran with his head in his hands.

I stopped to talk to the man behind the table and asked him what his goal was. He looked at me and said "I'm raising awareness that veterans have PTSD."  I asked him if he was a veteran, he said we was not.  I asked him if he was the parent of a veteran but again, he said he was not. Then I asked if he was a mental health professional? Minister? Trained in any other way? He said he was not to all of them as well.

Puzzled and perturbed, I proceeded to try to get some type of clarification of whatever possessed him to think he would be making any kind of difference for our veteran. Turned out he didn't think much at all about any of it other than he wanted my money.

This is exactly what the problem continues to be.

Gossip is idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others; the act of is also known as dishing or tattling. Gossip has been researched in terms of its evolutionary psychology origins.

Gossip has been researched in terms of its evolutionary psychology origins. This has found gossip to be an important means by which people can monitor cooperative reputations and so maintain widespread indirect reciprocity. Indirect reciprocity is a social interaction in which one actor helps another and is then benefited by a third party. Gossip has also been identified by Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary biologist, as aiding social bonding in large groups.

Social media has also provided a much faster way to share gossip. In only a matter of minutes, harmful gossip and rumors can spread online from one place in the world to another.

The term is sometimes used to specifically refer to the spreading of "dirt" and misinformation, as (for example) through excited discussion of scandals.

All this PTSD Awareness is nothing more than idle gossip.  Keep talking about the problem is only raising awareness that something is happening. Veterans and families already know all about it.

Good place to start maybe to stop talking about their problems unless you are offering solutions!

Military suicide data is not the same as Veteran suicide data, but some of these ne'er-do-wells blend both of them together using just the number of what they think are all there is.

Over the past decade the military has been using unproven training in "resilience" and "prevention" which produced a rise in the number of non-deployed forces. The prevalence of suicides among the non-deployed the DOD continue to focus on should have been a clue the training was worthless. If it did not help the non-deployed, how did they think it would help any of those with multiple deployments?

Finding a solution to Military Suicides cannot be accomplished until they stop doing what has not worked. 

In 2008 the Department of Defense Military Health System launched a website that was supposed to help clear things up. 

"More than 1.5 million troops have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.  The DOD estimates that up to 15-20 percent of returning troops have problems returning home. Irritability, depression, increased stress and relationship difficulties are typical concerns faced by service members and their families following deployment."

Too bad it didn't work.
This came out in 2009 several years after "prevention" started to make news reports.

In past years, the Army, which consists of 1.1 million active and reserve troops, has been just below or on par with the national suicide rate, Geren said.

But this year, with 128 confirmed and 15 pending, an estimated 20.2 suicides occurred per 100,000 soldiers, the highest since the Army began recording the figure in 1980. The figure is higher than the national suicide rate, which is less than 20 victims per 100,000 people.

It turned out they should have been worried because following that piece of news, the Army reported a 25% increase in the number of suicides from 2007 to 2008. By September the problem was so bad the DOD set up a task force to "prevent" suicides. It also turned out that as the number of enlisted went down, it also meant the percentage of suicides went up. 

While the Army thought the record had been surpassed in 2006 at 99 soldiers, along with 948 attempted suicides, the percentage was 17.3 out of 100,000. In June of 2016, USA Today reported that experts were concerned the high military suicide rate was the "new normal" and then added this. "The Army's suicide rate for active-duty soldiers averaged nearly 11-per-100-000 from Sept. 11, 2001, until shortly after the Iraq invasion in 2004. It more than doubled over the next five years, and, with the exception of a spike in 2012, has remained largely constant at 24-to-25-per-100,000, roughly 20% to 25% higher than a civilian population of the same age and gender makeup as the military."

As for our veterans it suicides have gone up 30% since 2001.

The study found that between 2001 and 2014, veteran suicides increased by 32 percent, while civilian suicides increased by 23 percent in the same time period. After controlling for factors like age and gender, this meant veterans faced a 21 percent greater risk for suicide than those who had not served in the armed forces.

So for all the money spent, years of excuses and awareness raising, we seem to be doing a lot more burying and a lot less healing. Maybe tonight I'll have a dream that we'll stop grieving as soon as everyone stops talking and starts doing something about all this!