22 veterans commit suicide each day: VA report

22 veterans commit suicide each day: VA report

usnews.nbcnews.com

The report notes that while the numbers of veterans who die by suicide each day "has remained relatively stable over the past 12 years," the overall percentage of people who die by suicide in America who are veterans has decreased slightly. The share of all suicides reported as "veterans" on state-issued death certificates was 25 percent in 1999 versus slightly more than 20 percent in 2010, according to VA researchers.

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Im not sure what I find more unsettling, the fact that 22 brave americans who served their country choose to end their lives daily, OR the fact that this has gone on for so long raising from 20 to 22 since the 90s.

Mental health care is in a shameful state in our country, what does it say about us that we can not even help men and women who served their country.

This story reminded me of my Best friends father who was a Vietnam era vet and to this day is struggle getting the proper benefits for his PTSD treatment.

usnews.nbcnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

thats what they want then they dont have to pay for their benefits when they are the ones that made them sick and hurt in the first place.

reply to post by dc4lifeskater


Seems like the case, My friends dad has been using money out of his own pocket to pay for treatment for his PTSD.

He has flash backs and nightmares to this day about his experience in Vietnam, to think we have generations of this problem and yet have not addressed it properly is shameful.

reply to post by benrl
Given the higher level of days in combat on average per year, to the many years so many people are rotating in and out of it over there, I think we're losing some of the best of an entire generation in a way no previous war has quite managed to do.

It's also gone full circle once again to where I know I listened to America flat say they wouldn't go again. For a couple decades at least, this nation said it would never do again. We're back to blaming the men (and women) as much or MORE than the mission and politicians that send them there.

After all, if the volunteer enlisted army all just left at the end of contract or whatever, does anyone think that would actually end the wars? It'd just trigger the draft. The Selective Service is the placeholder we all signed up for at 18.

We gotta bring our guys home since winning seems to be something out of reach by circumstance or choice. Doesn't matter which...but this kind of statistic would be one we'd be INFURIATED by if they were actual "killed in action".

They are, to my thinking.

Originally posted by benrl


Im not sure what I find more unsettling, the fact that 22 brave americans who served their country choose to end their lives daily, OR the fact that this has gone on for so long raising from 20 to 22 since the 90s.

Mental health care is in a shameful state in our country, what does it say about us that we can not even help men and women who served their country.

This story reminded me of my Best friends father who was a Vietnam era vet and to this day is struggle getting the proper benefits for his PTSD treatment.

usnews.nbcnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Thanks for bringing this article to our attention. And these are only the veteran deaths that are reported as suicide - I wonder what the statistics would say when you add in more passive types of suicide: drug/alcohol abuse, violence, crime.....

I think it is more than lack of mental health care though that has always been an problem for returning service people. There's a macho element involved about seeking help that seems to be getting better over the years but still needs to be addressed, not only in the military, but in our US society as a whole.

You have to question the consequences of teaching people to kill and a society that worships it's killers at a distance but doesn't want them at home.

An excellent resource on teaching to kill is the "Killology Research Group" at www.killology.com.... I first heard of Lt. Col. (Ret) Grossman during the nineties when a paper he had written (Grossman, D., "Trained to Kill: Are We Conditioning Our Children to Commit Murder?" Christianity Today, cover story, August 10, 1998. (Received national writing award, translated and reprinted in periodicals in eight languages; and reprinted in over a dozen U.S. and Canadian periodicals, to include: Hinduism Today, US Catholic, and Saturday Evening Post.) was circulating around my daughter's school. I was very impressed. This man is no liberal and makes his living teaching how to train killers - but his insight is dead on.

I think the most shocking aspect of this particular article, is how they refer to it as "a stable number". By any stretch, any number of suicides occurring daily in one particular organization, be it 1 suicide or many.. is clearly appalling.

Business as usual I guess. Carry on, nothing to see here... two dozen people committing suicide "a day".. move along now, busy busy.

Originally posted by guymontag
I think the most shocking aspect of this particular article, is how they refer to it as "a stable number". By any stretch, any number of suicides occurring daily in one particular organization, be it 1 suicide or many.. is clearly appalling.

Business as usual I guess. Carry on, nothing to see here... two dozen people committing suicide "a day".. move along now, busy busy.

Its only just 96,360 of Americas best and brightest young men and women over 12 years no biggie...

The absurdity of it all is maddening, we have learned nothing as a nation since Vietnam.

War on terror should be changed to the war on Americas youth.

Originally posted by benrl
Mental health care is in a shameful state in our country, what does it say about us that we can not even help men and women who served their country.

lol, read the side effects of the medications they are given, all of them have suicidal tendencies as a side effect. We don't have "shameful" health-care, we have too much and it clearly does not work.

Sadly all over what . Nothing Zip zero ziltch . Wars fought since ww2 have been over nothing but corporate interests with the few exceptions and this what kids have been signing up for .

Hitler was a problem that threatened the world bin laden supposedly coordinated planes to fly in the WTC and Pentagon and was a threat to .......

ETA the governments everywhere have turned their back to these people who had to witness horrific and partake in horrific acts and thats needs to change

Originally posted by freedomSlave
Sadly all over what . Nothing Zip zero ziltch . Wars fought since ww2 have been over nothing but corporate interests with the few exceptions and this what kids have been signing up for .

How was WW2 NOT over corporate interests? I know years of propaganda have filled everyone's head with the idea that was some heroic war where we came in and killed the evil Nazis but it simply isn't so.

Originally posted by Superhans
How was WW2 NOT over corporate interests? I know years of propaganda have filled everyone's head with the idea that was some heroic war where we came in and killed the evil Nazis but it simply isn't so.

Ok some aspects were for corporate interests but I don't think they were selling the jews as slaves .

reply to post by Superhans

We have shameful healthcare because instead of addressing the problems of these soldiers, they simply prescribe those drugs with the harmful side effects! Problem solved and money made.

"Oh, those drugs don't work? - here try these then - the more you take the more we make",

There's far less profit in true care and therapy. And even less profit in NOT sending these guys to war in the first place.

Originally posted by Maluhia
reply to post by Superhans

 

We have shameful healthcare because instead of addressing the problems of these soldiers, they simply prescribe those drugs with the harmful side effects! Problem solved and money made.

That is how modern healthcare works, no joke. Even a "good" psychiatrist will sit there and listen to them for a while but then gives them the medication and sends them on their way.
I think a psychologist would help tremendously or anyone a friend,clergy or whoever they want. But these medications clearly don't work.
The whole criteria for being mentally ill is stupid and flawed. You get sent off to a foreign country and spend a few years killing others or driving around on edge hoping to god that today is not the day you get to meet an IED. Then you come home and you need to adjust a while because you were basically killing people and living in fear for your life- is that mentally ill or what any sane person act like after living through that?

Originally posted by freedomSlave

Originally posted by Superhans
How was WW2 NOT over corporate interests? I know years of propaganda have filled everyone's head with the idea that was some heroic war where we came in and killed the evil Nazis but it simply isn't so.

Ok some aspects were for corporate interests but I don't think they were selling the jews as slaves .

Just off the top of my head I know that Kodak used concentration camp prisoners to get the cameras made. There were a bunch of companies that invested in Hitler as well as banks that lent Germany money. After the war a lot of the factories got bought up by corporations for cheap. And you had I.G. Farben and Standard Oil making all sorts of deals throughout the entire time.
We got involved because of pearl harbor, we provoked the Japanese by not selling them oil because of their "aggression against china". Yet we were making all types of deals with Germany.
The soldiers that fought in WW2 were brave and honorable men but this was in no way an "honorable" war we were involved in.

reply to post by Superhans


Agreed. There's even a push now to make grief a mental illness.

The drug companies seem to be continuing to make progress in the attempt to bring the entire nation within their net of dependent drug users. Peter Whorisky provides a fine summary of a recent development in an aptly titled article in the Washington Post: Antidepressants to treat grief? Psychiatry panelists with ties to drug industry say yes.

letstalkbooksandpolitics.blogspot.com...

reply to post by Maluhia


Latter grief will probably be put on a spectrum. The current model for diagnosis is very subjective as is but recently they got rid of autism and its going to be called ASD (autism spectrum disorder) in the new version of the DSM. It basically puts it on a spectrum so a person could be slightly autistic or super autistic.

I imagine they will be doing this with many other "illnesses" down the road. That way it opens the door for psychiatrists to have an all encompassing net for virtually any behavior and claim that it falls on the spectrum of one disorder or another. Don't worry about the police state, the therapeutic state is way more real.

reply to post by Superhans

Don't worry about the police state, the therapeutic state is way more real.

LOL. Great line. Puts a new spin on all those "zombie apocalypse" theories!

How many men in a battalion?
1500? A regiment?
4-6000?
This amounts to a ghost regiment every year, marching off to oblivion.....simply written off by the country they
thought would honour its committent to them, as they had honoured their own committment to it.
I can see the pairs of empty boots, in their silent ranks...filling up a large parade square, standing
row on row....
These represent the men and boys who went to war,........and could never get home again......
God bless them wherever they may be...............

The VA compensation system is rigged. I am going through it myself right now. The exam they do, that your disability rating is assessed from, is not done by the VA. They hire a company to do it. According to the rules any doubt is supposed to favor the vet, but because they get payed by the VA that doesn't happen. So the VA has a way to downplay vets disabilities, and short change them without breaking their own rules.

"QTC is the largest private provider of government-outsourced medical and disability examination services in the nation."

The Compensation & Pension Exam

I have yet to go through that exam but I have read countless stories of vets who have. The doctors often don't do the full exam they are supposed to, they lie and make things up. Anything to minimize your health problems.

It's difficult enough to get the original claim approved, but then you have that exam, and they can even deny your claim at that stage, but apparently that doesn't happen often.

19,500 vets died waiting on claims last year.

In the fiscal year that ended in September, the agency paid $437 million in retroactive benefits to the survivors of nearly 19,500 veterans who died waiting

Number of veterans who die waiting for benefits claims skyrockets

Doctor lied on medical opinion for the VA

False C & P Exam

23% of Disability Claims Processed Incorrectly

VA's Incompetence Disaster Known as the Comp and Pen Claims System