120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week

120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week

Source: Alternet - Penny Coleman

Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone — and remember, this is just in 45 states — there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.
As the widow of a Vietnam vet who killed himself after coming home, and as the author of a book for which I interviewed dozens of other women who had also lost husbands (or sons or fathers) to PTSD and suicide in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful to CBS for undertaking this long overdue investigation. I am also heartbroken that the numbers are so astonishingly high and tentatively optimistic that perhaps now that there are hard numbers to attest to the magnitude of the problem, it will finally be taken seriously. I say tentatively because this is an administration that melts hard numbers on their tongues like communion wafers.

Since these new wars began, and in spite of a continuous flood of alarming reports, the Department of Defense has managed to keep what has clearly become an epidemic of death beneath the radar of public awareness by systematically concealing statistics about soldier suicides. They have done everything from burying them on official casualty lists in a category they call “accidental noncombat deaths” to outright lying to the parents of dead soldiers. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has rubber-stamped their disinformation, continuing to insist that their studies indicate that soldiers are killing themselves, not because of their combat experiences, but because they have “personal problems.”

http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4882

:cry:

I wonder what the relative numbers are for veterans who commit suicide versus the number who earn $40,000 for college?

by their images of war and what they were called on to do.

I hold them all in my prayers. Their families too.

The figure cited is only for 2005 for 45 States' data, but if true, it would mean since the Iraqnam clusterfuck began (2003), over 31,000 active/veteran members have taken their own lives. The data from 5 others States is unavailable, for whatever reason.

there are millions of veterans.

some new studies coming out on the effectiveness of using art to combat PTSD. If she doesn't get IRB approval for her original proposal, she is going to do a literature review and some studies on combat vets and PTSD and the value of art therapy.

Remember the story from a couple of weeks ago about the young man (paraplegic?) who won an award for his paintings?

This story is right up her alley, I have forwarded to her. Thanks for the link.