Too Much To Be Aware of Lacking on Suicides

Basic Directions Missing in American Veterans
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 20, 2015


Years ago, while still living in Massachusetts, we were heading to Saco Maine to stay at a friend's summer house.

This was long before CPS and Google driving directions. I get lost getting out of a paper bag, so naturally, I got lost on this trip as well. I pulled into a gas station to get directions.

The attendant lifted the lid of his cap, scratched his head and said "Ya can't get there from here" and then went on to tell me that I had to go back to Route 1 to start all over again.

That is exactly where we are on preventing military suicides. We can't get there from where we are right now. We need to go back to where we got off before the instantaneous information gathering from Facebook and Twitter ended up trapping what we knew all along to become lost in assumptions and blanket statements on what PTSD really is and how it is the largest contributing factor.

While some talk about "22 a day" no one is really talking about current military suicides.
The Department of Defense releases suicide reports quarterly now.

"During the months of January through March of this year (2014), there were 74 suicides among service members in the active component, 24 suicides among service members in the reserves, and 22 suicides among service members in the National Guard."

What the numbers do not factor into the report is the number of current servicemembers has also gone down.

According to the DOD Personnel Workforce in June 2014 there were 1,384,986 serving but by December it was 1,369,482.  2015 began with 1,368,137 but by July the numbers were reduced to 1,354, 604.

For the last quarter of 2014

"In the fourth quarter of 2014, there were 69 suicides among service members in the active component, 21 suicides among service members in the reserves, and 18 suicides among service members in the National Guard."

For 2014 with over 15,000 less serving from June to December, the total for the year was,

In calendar year 2014, there were 268 confirmed suicides in the active component, up slightly from 254 in 2013; 79 in the reserve, down from 86 in 2013; and 87 in the National Guard, down from 134.

The Department of Defense released the suicide numbers for the first quarter of 2015

"In the first quarter of 2015, there were 57 suicides among service members in the active component, 15 suicides among service members in the reserve component and 27 suicides among service members in the National Guard."

That is 99 in 90 days, but why mention there were less in the first place? Seems like that would be a very important factor but all too often omitted from what we are reminded of. Add in the fact the DOD has been doing prevention training since around 2007 and this is a very distressing outcome.

Even more troubling are the number of younger veterans taking their own lives. They are triple their civilian peer rate, but the DOD doesn't have to count them. The DOD doesn't have to explain how all their prevention efforts failed them. They don't have to explain how those efforts couldn't even prevent the suicides of non-deployed troops but they expected it to work on those deployed repeatedly.

No link between combat deployment and suicides on Military Times April 1, 2015 released this.

Appearing in JAMA Psychiatry online on Wednesday, the study by researchers at the Defense Department's National Center for Telehealth and Technology, or T2, indicates that although the suicide rate among active-duty personnel has increased since 2001, the rate for those who deployed to a combat zone was roughly the same as for those who did not.

"This is an important finding. It shows those who separated from military service had a 63 percent higher suicide rate overall. ... Why are these people at higher risk, we don't have data to explain it," said Mark Reger, study lead author and deputy director of T2.

So we go on talking about the "22 a day" as if we learned something, but we haven't.  We haven't learned that all the prevention programs the DOD has been using to prevent them from taking their own lives has not worked in a decade for those in the military or those who left the military.  We don't talk about how all the programs, funding, charities and Congressional hearings have not worked.  What we really don't talk about is that all of these numbers in the Veteran Community would be even higher had it not been for the things that do work.

There is an article on Huffington Post, We Can Prevent Veteran Suicides by Rita Nakashima Brock Ph.D.

"One of the worst aspects of returning from combat and leaving the military is the extreme isolation. Talking about their pain can be nearly impossible because of the stoic ethic of military training. In addition, a veteran may believe he or she is no longer a good person because of having done "evil" or unforgivable things in combat. So they isolate themselves and shut down their capacities for intimacy, vulnerability, and connection to others.That isolation is compounded by the common desire to be back in combat--after the intense bonding and drama of war, ordinary life can seem dull, gray, and futile."

But that isn't something "new" that was learned. Point Man International Ministries has been addressing the "moral injury" spiritual component since 1984. For over 30 years, the work started by a Vietnam veteran Marine, Seattle Police Officer Bill Landreth, has been not just saving lives, but restoring veterans to a better quality of life as well as helping their families heal.

"In the past three years of such listening, I have found myself transformed for the better, including becoming a better listener. I've also been profoundly heartened in discovering how resilient and persistent moral conscience remains in the face of unimaginable trauma." Rita Nakashima Brock

After listening for over 30 years it is a wonderful experience seeing veterans go from total hopelessness to healing but there are not enough providing what they need to actually get there from where they are.

How does a man or woman go from being willing to sacrifice their life for the sake of someone else, be willing to endure hardship after hardship, separation from family and friends back home, train under some of the harshest conditions and then survive combat only to lose their life as a veteran who was supposed to be out of danger with everyone talking about how they are raising awareness?

With all this awareness raising, have we totally lost our ability to learn what history and facts have to teach us? Have we become so ignorant of our own shortcomings we fail to make ourselves aware of all the other factors behind the realities veterans live with everyday?

I am often contacted by family members after someone they loved died by their own hand.  They want to do something to spare another family from knowing that anguish so they decide to get involved with "awareness raising" when they do not know the basic facts and have not even begun to learn.  They are not prepared for what comes with the job they want to take on. They have no answers, no plans, no resources, no experts to send veterans in crisis to, yet they seek to raise awareness of the problems when veterans are fully aware, perhaps even more aware, of what the reality is for them.

They do not need be made aware of what has become part of their lives.  They need to be aware of the basic fact that their life does not have to be so painful, that there is hope of healing and where to get it.  They need to have answers, not slogans. How do they forgive and find peace? How do they forgive themselves for what they believe they did or did not do?

Most veterans have heard the number repeatedly but have not heard why that number has not changed after so many have been doing so much leading them down the wrong road.  Where is the hope in any of the "awareness" raising? There is hope in knowing more veterans heal and live better lives but there is more hope when these veterans finally know how they can get there too.

From where they have become lost on the road from there to nowhere, they need to know at what point they got lost in the first place and then they can find their way to where they want to go. Otherwise, they will just keep going in circles until they run out of gas and give up.