That is clear when the number "22" is used when that is nowhere close to what the real numbers are.
That study was an average of limited death certificates from 21 states.
Veterans in general commit suicide double the civilian population rate.
Over 70% of them are over 50.
For younger veterans they are triple their peer rate after years of "prevention" and "awareness" raising from the DOD, the VA and far too many charities have gotten involved.
For female veterans their numbers are even higher. The LA Times recently reported that "For women ages 18 to 29, veterans kill themselves at nearly 12 times the rate of nonveterans."
Veterans don't need PTSD Awareness or suicide awareness. They need to know facts and above all else, they need to know they can heal.
PTSD service dogs are wonderful but not for all veterans. Some veterans can't have dogs and some don't like dogs. What is being done for them?
Awareness, money raised to combat veteran's suicide
By Dick Myers
St Mary's County
06/17/2015
Hollywood, MD -- Every day 22 veterans commit suicide. A day-long campaign called Stop 22 on Friday June 12 in St. Mary’s County was aimed at doing something about that by raising awareness and raising money for a unique program for veterans.
During morning rush hour along the Route 235 corridor, 22 groups of volunteers waived Stop 22 signs to let passing motorists know about the gravity of the problem.
The Stop 22 campaign was organized by Abby Mills, who has four Marine Corps brothers. One of those brothers, after multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, was going through a crisis but fortunately he was helped before it was too late.
Mills is now passionate about providing help to as many veterans as possible to reduce the horrific suicide toll, not only for the loss of a human life but also the impact on the veteran’s family and friends.
Mills works for defense contractor BCF Solutions, which has an office on Airport View drive in Hollywood. Her employer helped Mills spearhead the effort and sponsored an open house Friday afternoon that included providing access to number of resources for veterans and also speeches by a number of subject experts.
The recipient of the monies raised by Stop 22 will be K9s for Warriors, “a program that pairs rescue dogs with military veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disability, traumatic brain injury and/or military sexual trauma,” according to information provided during the open house.
read more here
For Heaven's Sake! We're getting close to the point where there are more charities raising "awareness" than there are currently serving in the military. If you're laughing then you need to stop and think that there are more and more charities popping up all over the country.
The question all of us need to be asking is if any of them were actually "raising awareness" then why are so many veterans still killing themselves?
Since when does it cost more to "raise awareness" than it does to actually take care of veterans?
I would appreciate your sharing the entire article, and not just part of it so people can learn that the 'awareness' portion was one of the four parts of our campaign, and the title of the article a bit misleading. The open house hosted multiple organizations made up of charities, Veteran's groups, State funded Veterans programs and concerned citizens. Th goal was NOT to create more charities, but to bring many charities and groups together to share information and offer better resources for Veterans in crisis. Service dogs are one of many ways, and a highly successful way, of helping Veterans in need.
ReplyDeleteI respectfully request that you amend your post to provide all of the information.
I do not post the "whole article" since it is someone else's work. I edit as I see it based on over 30 years of working on PTSD and veterans, plus as many years of groups popping up all over the country while it all gets worse for them. By the way, this all started with Vietnam veterans like my husband.
ReplyDeleteWhat worked all these years has been forgotten about and folks seem to think they have the answer for everything but then the information that comes out if far from factual.
Awareness is just a lot of talk about the problems veterans already know they have but not enough talk about what they need to know.
Service dogs are wonderful, as I said in the post but they do not help all veterans and even the help they provide is not all the veteran needs.
If anyone wants to read more of the article they have the link to it. It stands as is.