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How Can Government Battle a 'Suicide Epidemic' Among Veterans?

I did not go overseas in the VN war, but I met a lotof combat of combat vets in the years after the war who had serious problems.


In the Northwest in the 80s there was a term 'tripwire vet' for vets who went off into national forests and lived in self imposed isolation. Some would booby trap the area around them. One guy I worked with in the 80s spent a year in aremote cabin when he got back.


Another guy who grew up in Maine couldn't walk in the woods anymore, he'd fall into his war state ofmind. Another guy I knew almost killed his wife. She playfully jumpedo his back without warning and he he hit her hard.


From an 80s documentary about a group of American vets who went back to VN and meet Vietnamese soldiersfrom the war, the Vietnamese vets were having the same emotionalproblems.


A tour for a draftee in VN was a year.In our volunteer military over the length of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan people saw multiple combat tours over years. I'm no psychologist, but is was probably brutal.


Don't have a clue as to how that kindof long term trauma can be mitigated. How do you ever really get oerit?
 
Why did you put scare quotes around the phrase "suicide epidemic" in the thread title?
 
Suicide has changed it's demographics in the general population too. People 45 to 62 are now topping the chart, closely followed by those over 85.

I don't think it's just a PTSD problem, although that helps. I knew several people that came back from Vietnam with serious problems, and yes, even one that lived in the woods in Northern Michigan, and another that went deep in the swamps of Southern Florida.

I think it's an economic problem, a job problem, a problem of basic human dignity.

http://www.afsp.org/understanding-suicide/facts-and-figures

http://www.veteransinc.org/about-us/statistics/#homelessness

Veterans & Homelessness

Number of veterans as of Sept. 2009: approximately 23 million
Increasing numbers of returning military personnel: according to the Mass. Dept. of Veterans’ Services, approximately 31,000 service members have returned to the Commonwealth since Sept. 11, 2001.
Between 529,000 and 840,000 veterans are homeless at some time during the year.
On any given night, more than 300,000 veterans are living on the streets or in shelters in the U.S.
Approx. 33% of homeless males in the U.S. are veterans.
Veterans are twice as likely as other Americans to become chronically homeless.
Veterans represent 11% of the adult civilian population, but 26% of the homeless population, according to the Homeless Research Institute (2007).
Veterans are more at risk of becoming homeless than non-veterans
The number of homeless Vietnam-era veterans, male and female, is greater than the number of soldiers who died during the war.

Primary causes of homelessness among veterans are:

Lack of income due to limited education and lack of transferable skills from military to civilian life (especially true of younger veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan)
Combat-related physical health issues and disabilities
Combat-related mental health issues and disabilities
Substance abuse problems that interfere with job retention
Weak social networks due to problems adjusting to civilian life
Lack of services.
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But yeah, let's do some more wars to protect the interests of multi-national corporations that don't pay taxes in the US.
 
How Can Government Battle a 'Suicide Epidemic' Among Veterans?
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Does government want to do this?
If so, is "battle" the most appropriate word for what government needs to do?
If so: less lip-service, less exploitation, better health care and material support....
...and maybe stop recruiting kids who just can't a job.
 
I think it's really hard to come back from a military combat environment then take shit from people while working at McDonalds.

Part of the problem is surely Post Traumatic Stress, but I also think part of the problem is military training itself.
 
I had two great uncles by marriage that fought in Korea and another one fight in World War Two. The one who fought in World War Two was very quiet and reserved. He may have been that way before the war, because all of his brothers were like that too. One of the great uncles that went to Korea was the rare veteran who would talk about the things he did or saw, or allowed to happen so he wouldn't get shot by his own people. He was a firm believer in God and Jesus and would have night terrors that he was standing before them at the Judgement, and all the men and women and children he killed, all the women he did not try to save from being raped, ect are standing before God and Jesus asking them to sent my uncle to hell for what he did or did not try to stop. They would pass the judgement that he was damned, and my aunt said every other night he would wake up screaming and crying right when the angle in the dream picks him up to throw him into hell.

My great uncle was a good man and did not deserve to have such dreams.
 
Zeluvia said:
I think it's an economic problem, a job problem, a problem of basic human dignity.
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You are correct.
I just skimmed over the article looking for key words and found none so I'll go out on a limb here and assume streamlining the process to access these government programs was not mentioned. Effective government programs was not mentioned. The public hears about or reads about these programs to help vets and think; Oh that's great, we're getting help where it's needed. Thing is, the public doesn't have to navigate these programs. They are either worthless as in, Oh my god, not another resume writing workshop, or they tell you to network. Network! Are you serious? You know what a lot of veteran's network consist of after leaving the military and likely moving back home, home as in literally home? Zip point shit. What's the number one path to finding a job? Networking. They tell you to transpose your military training to civilian terms. Fine, I can transpose it to plain English. Here again, there is terminology specific to the civilian world and unless you can make claim to it, you're SOL. Six Sigma is a good example. So why would anyone in HR take a chance and pass your resume along? They won't, and they don't.
How about providing incentives for hiring vets? Good idea. Then I actually went to the IRS website and looked at the qualifiers. Well, that oughta weed out about 80% of vets.
Should be relatively easy for a vet to get a federal job. Sure. We'll give them bonus points to give them preference. Disability? Even more bonus points. Now, I'm not the shiniest marble in the jar but I can say a significant percentage of vets are going to give up on this process long before they figure it out. And for those that do figure it out and pursue a federal job and their resume makes it past OPM and it gets to the hiring manager's desk, well he's got a few tricks too for "weeding out the vets" as it's called. Think you weren't treated fairly in the hiring process? You can complain. Not to OPM of course but to the offending agency. But they're the people I have the problem with, isn't this sort of a conflict of interest? Shouldn't an OPM Vet Rep be the arbiter? Nope. You could try DOL. They have a complaint process and Vet Reps but no enforcement authority so your ultimate solution is to sue for the job. Talk about a good first impression, sue your potential employer for a job. The job that was likely earmarked for nepotism. I think the key for vets getting a job is to become a Vet Rep, there seems to be a lot of them.
The VA Healthcare System. What a wonderful system. They have everything, if you can get your hands on it. Let's start with parking. Fresno VA hospital is a good example. Get there before 0730 or no parking for you. Your appointment is what time? What difference does it make? You can get a ride from the county Vet Rep. He's got a van. Your appointment is what time? Well, we have to wait until the last appointment anyways so, what difference does it make? Park on the street. Near a VA facility? In this neighborhood where the disadvantaged residents assume there's prescription meds inside?
I could go into the comedy of errors that occurs in securing an appointment. Appointment hell, a friggin' call from the scheduler for a consultation for an appointment. This would entail much more personal detail than I care make public. Suffice it to say, it can be summed up in one word: apathy.

I could go on and on and on, but my back hurts. I need to move around. Stand up, sit down, move around, repeat. One good thing is my f'ed up spine is f'ing up my nerve root so maybe this will push me to the 50% disability mark and they'll stop subtracting my disability pay from my retirement pay. I hear it's tough getting to that 50% mark. But, you keep fighting or, well, you don't.

Veteran programs are what I like to call effectively ineffective. They're nothing more than a politician giving the civilian public a hand-job. And as the war(s) wind down and the public attention moves on, veterans are first to get the budget axe (or did that already start?) and the vets go back out onto the streets.

Zeluvia said:
But yeah, let's do some more wars to protect the interests of multi-national corporations that don't pay taxes in the US.
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I'm all for this brother. Float it past the GOP or any politician with a business in their district that feeds the military industrial complex. There's one near you.

Okay, my hour's up. I relinquish the couch.
 
Well first off we need to realize that raw numbers are irrelevant. I don't want to see anyone kill himself, much less a veteran. But it happens throughout society. So we need to understand whether it is happening more to veterans or not. And the answer is not. According to the VA, there are about 22 million veterans in the US. 2000 killed themselves last year. Or one in 11,000. There are 317 million people in the US last year, and 30,000 killed themselves or one in 10,500. Effectively the same percentage.

I'm all for helping veterans who have mental health issues as a result of going through combat. But this article and others like it give the impression that us veterans a all a bunch of crazy psychopaths who are one step away from pulling out a gun and wailing on people and/or oursleves.

The truth is that the vast majority of veterans, even severe combat veterans get over it and move on with their lives - anecdotal stories about my poor pitiful uncle and his nightmares notwithstanding.

SLD
 
They have to have the want to live back in their lives. I would encourage them to get out and live.
 
Nexus said:
So he's a good man despite killing innocent women and children?
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That's the tragedy. Human brains are complex and affected by many influences.
Good men do enlist in armies for various reasons - the most common being conviction that their leaders make sound decisions, that their country's values need defending, that some wrong must be righted. When they enlist, they're not intent on killing innocent women and children, but of rescuing them.
Then the army mentality takes over - some of it planned and deliberate; some of it atavistic, some of it necessary for self-preservation. Then the conflict itself - each theater, each action is different and leaves different scars on both body and mind.

Then the changed - more or less damaged - man comes home... except he doesn't have one anymore.
Thank-you-for-your-service; here's a medal. Now, disappear.
 
aeebee50 said:
They have to have the want to live back in their lives. I would encourage them to get out and live.
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This is beneath you. Atheists just have to want to have faith.

Life altering experiences are just that, life altering. Moments of realization happen in a lot of ways, and can be positive or negative, but once you had one, there is no going back.
 
SLD said:
Well first off we need to realize that raw numbers are irrelevant. I don't want to see anyone kill himself, much less a veteran. But it happens throughout society. So we need to understand whether it is happening more to veterans or not. And the answer is not. According to the VA, there are about 22 million veterans in the US. 2000 killed themselves last year. Or one in 11,000. There are 317 million people in the US last year, and 30,000 killed themselves or one in 10,500. Effectively the same percentage.
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You have no idea how to properly linkbait.
 
Underseer said:
Why did you put scare quotes around the phrase "suicide epidemic" in the thread title?
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Those are not 'scare' quotes; they are being correctly used to denote that the words come from the advocates about whom the article was written. Quotation marks are still frequently and validly used to denote the fact that someone is quoting someone else... ;)
 
BH said:
... He was a firm believer in God and Jesus and would have night terrors that he was standing before them at the Judgement, and all the men and women and children he killed, all the women he did not try to save from being raped, ect are standing before God and Jesus asking them to sent my uncle to hell for what he did or did not try to stop. They would pass the judgement that he was damned, and my aunt said every other night he would wake up screaming and crying right when the angle in the dream picks him up to throw him into hell.
Click to expand...

Well at least he had his faith to comfort him :rolleyesa:
 
1. Stop war. Just plain quit having wars.
2. Since #1 will never happen, one way to begin would be to quit making it a career killer to seek the help of a mental health professional while in the service. Among the many things I learned from my son as a result of his military service is that it is heavily, heavily discouraged to seek out mental health services while enlisted and effectively kills your career in the military, which is important to many of those enlisted men and women. Most of the 'health care' that was available for any ailment consisted of ibuprofen and recommendations to get more sleep, which was not possible on base, much less while deployed. So that would actually be useful.
3. Do more to foster strong ties between the enlisted (and officers) and their families, in an honest and open way. I think this is actually much better than in generations past where contact would be limited to very sparse letters and much sparser phone calls. Now, internet and satellite phones make contact much easier which is really helpful to both soldier and family at home.
4. Allow troops to do much more in terms of actually building and providing services for the populace of areas where they are stationed. This has been a point of pride from every single service person I have met.
5. Please cut the crap AKA bureaucracy. It permeates every single second of every single day and seems so arbitrary and pointless and counter productive, literally like drowning in a soup of garbage.

My personal opinion is that human beings are not designed to kill other human beings, although we certainly do it often enough. But it exacts a terrible toll on all who are remotely normal.
 
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