Another Veteran's Suicide Leaves More Questions

This is the headline.

"Veteran suicide prompts awareness, resources available for those who need help"

And this is the story of the veteran who committed suicide three days into this New Year!

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS)  

It was just two days ago that a 31-year-old man from Potterville took his own life and the situation has left many wondering what could have been done to prevent this tragedy from happening. 

The 31-year-old man from Potterville was a military veteran who deputies reported suffered from PTSD, depression and a serious brain injury. 

It was just before 1 p.m. on Wednesday that Clinton County Sheriff’s Officials were dispatched to East Olive Elementary School in St. Johns for a report of a psychiatric person.When they arrived on scene, sheriff’s officials determined the man was suicidal and armed with a handgun. 

Authorities contacted a Clinton County negotiator who spoke with the man for several hours. Unfortunately, the man ended up taking his own life and died of a single gun-shot wound.

Click the link to read more on this from WLNS News. 

In the interview, Eric Calley talked about all the resources that are available for veterans. The question that never seems to get answered is, "Why don't they turn to these 'resources' when they are in crisis instead of giving up?"

Last year law enforcement had to face off with veterans almost every week. Sometimes, it ended with the veteran getting some help. Other times it ended with the veteran being arrested and facing charges. Too often, it ended with the veteran's life being taken and members of law enforcement having to deal with the loss that did not needed to happen.

These men and women go from risking their lives to not being willing to live any longer. Something totally wrong with all of this, but then there has been something totally wrong going on with everything being "available" but failing too many. 

Afghanistan Veteran "...can focus on healing" after war

Army veteran, family get new home mortgage free

WFXL FOX 31
Alexandria Ikomani
January 5, 2018

“I can focus more on my healing, take care of me and take care of my family now that we have a home.” Sgt. Chad Turner

ALBANY. Ga. — An army veteran and his family have somewhere to call home.

Operation FINALLY Home is an organization that gives free homes to veterans in need.

Sergeant Chad Turner and his family can't put their feelings into many words.

Turner was diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries, short-term memory loss, post-traumatic stress disorder and more after an explosion while serving in Afghanistan.

read more here 

Heroes Warehouse Fills Home Base

ABC7 Salutes Heroes Warehouse, organization that furnishes homes for veterans
ABC 7 News
Josh Haskell
January 5, 2018

"They place them in permanent housing, which is wonderful and get them off the streets, but there's no furniture. Just imagine yourself going on vacation and you have an empty hotel room." Mary Kelly

FONTANA, Calif. (KABC) --

Iraq War veteran Ted Telemaque and his son slept on the floor of their Riverside apartment when they first moved in because they didn't have enough money to furnish their new home.

"I moved in there and I was scratching my head, ok, as a single father, what do I do? I reached out, tried to exert all options and then came across the Heroes Warehouse. Now I have my whole apartment furnished, from bed, to couch, to even kitchen," Telemaque said.

Since 2012, the Heroes Warehouse in Fontana - founded by Mary Kelly - has helped 3,000 families adjust to life after the service. Their 7,000 square foot warehouse isn't just full of donated household furniture, but washers and dryers, food and clothes.
read more here

Stealing healing or raising awareness?

In the fight for their lives!
Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 5, 2018
Stealing healing or raising awareness? That is the question that needs to be answered fast. If people do not know about a situation, they think it is only happening to them. If no one talks about what is happening to them, no one tries to do anything about it.

That's the point. We talked about suicides when no one knew it was happening, then tried to move onto healing when no one was talking about that either. Now we have to talk about both, but it seems far too few are listening...again.

"Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,How you suffered for your sanity,How you tried to set them free.They would not listen, they're not listening still.Perhaps they never will..." Starry, Starry Night

January 6, 2006 was one of the first post I did on a veteran committing suicide.

An Iraq war veteran's suicide earlier this month was a cry for helping others with post-traumatic stress disorder, his close friend says.
Douglas A. Barber, a 35-year-old truck driver, shot and killed himself on Jan. 16 with a shotgun as Lee County sheriff's deputies and two friends on the phone tried to talk him out of it.

That was when I was "screaming in an empty room" trying to "raise awareness" of something I had been tracking for decades on other sites I had online. After all, I'd been doing it since 1993 when I had been given my first PC. Truth is, by then I had already been active in writing about it to local newspapers since 1984. It took me two years before that to understand enough to open my mouth publicly.

I tried to do something that would hit more people back in 2007 with the video "Death Because They Served" but I had to a lot of research first. Over 400 reports later, it was necessary to get their stories out.

Back then, yes, "raising awareness" was vital.. It was the only way anyone would try to do something on a massive scale. Little did I know that the "effort" would be reduced down to an "easy number to remember" and people would get away with quoting from a headline.

Non-combat deaths, non-caring media was the first attempt to put the stories together April 16, 2007. That was followed up with Cause of death, because they served. It must have worked because in August of 2007, Greg Mitchell asked "Why isn't the press on suicide watch." (I checked to see if the original link worked, it doesn't by mine still does.)

The thing is, we knew there was a problem back then. We also knew there were things to do to make sure we changed the outcome. 

Raising awareness meant that veterans would finally find out they were not alone, and not just about talking about how many gave up. It was about facts, sure, but it was also about the most important fact of all. They could heal. Life could get better.

So, most of in all this since "before the flood" move on from talking about the "problem" after the press and politicians decided they needed to focus on this great American secret we lived with. The problem was when we moved on, they moved in and took over.

They took over the attention of the press and got boatloads of cash to talk about something they had absolutely no understanding of or even a basic enough idea to know what had been done, how long it had all gone on, or even discover the way to change the outcome.

We had to step back into the mix and not just fight for veterans to take back control of their lives, but fight to get the facts straight.

Before I got involved in giving suicides attention, it was more about raising awareness of healing.  That's why the books and the videos, plus all these articles.

If the truth is supposed to "set you free" then we need to make sure we set veterans free from the notion that they cannot heal. That their last worst day is the one they just had because with the right help, there is a whole new world of living with PTSD but not letting PTSD destroy them anymore.



If you want to know what they need to know, here is something they need to reminded of. They were willing to die because they loved others more. Help them live for love now too!

Lessons from WMHT’s multimedia ‘Vietnam in a Word’

‘We are the carriers’: Lessons from WMHT’s multimedia ‘Vietnam in a Word’

Current

Ian Fox

January 3, 2018

WMHT’s project “Vietnam in a Word” caught my eye with its simple concept and its even more elegant execution: a multimedia and community-driven oral history project, realized as an attractive digital hub for all of the station’s programming related to The Vietnam War, the documentary film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

WMHT staffers interview a Vietnam veteran at the Gateway Diner in Albany.

ALBANY, N.Y. — The offices of joint licensee WMHT would blend into its business-park surroundings if not for a protruding broadcast tower throwing its light into the November afternoon sun. Situated between the rowhouse-lined town square of Troy, N.Y., and Albany’s legislator-laden diners, the station’s innocuous digs — like those of many public media stations — don’t scream “community center.”

Yet WMHT’s exceptional work in its community is exactly why I was in the station’s parking lot on a biting cold day, a mile from the main road and 175 miles from my Boston home. It’s the first of what’ll be many station visits across the country for this series, In Public, in which I’ll explore the operations of innovative community engagement projects across public media.

read more here

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The word I'd pick is "mind-boggling." The first time I heard a group of veterans talking about it, that was the term that struck me the most. They were still trying to figure it out.