Not Enough Senators Aware of History of Suicides

Update:
Glad some report is paying attention to all of this.

Veteran suicide rate rose by nearly 30 percent since 2001: VA report

REUTERS
03 AUG 2016

It is about time someone brought out the worst part of all of this proving what we already knew.


Suicide Mission
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 3, 2016

Brandon Ketchum served three tours of duty overseas. He deployed twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan. He’d been struggling with PTSD and substance abuse so he made an emergency appointment at the Iowa City VA Medical Center on July 7th. Afterward, he posted on social media about not being admitted even though he requested it and explained to a doctor that he felt his safety and health were in jeopardy. His family thinks he might still be here today had he gotten the help he was looking for.

Three Senators want answers. Joni Ernst, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are acting as if nothing like this happened before, even though they should all know better. Everyone should know better after all these years, but it has all gotten worse.

There were plenty of excuses when troops came home after all wars needing help to heal but after surviving combat, they could not survive being back home. We talked about all of it in whispers, that is when we were not suffering in silence.  No one understood and the media did not care, so the American public didn't either.

It is still happening now when 65% of the suicides within the veterans community end the lives of those over the age of 50. The press has younger veterans thinking it is all about their generation and all these problems never happened before. The truth is, as more and more is being done, there are more and more ending their own lives.  I know, big shocker there since the VA reported suicides at 22 a day and now they report it is 20 a day.

In the report from the VA there is a chart showing that in 1999 they had the numbers the same but once digging was done, it turned out we also had about 7 million more veterans in the country at the time according to the US Census reports.

Why aren't those Senators demanding answers from everyone? 

How about they start with the military paying billions in awareness and prevention when the younger generation of veterans commit suicide triple their civilian peer rate after all that "training" was provided to them? After all, you'd think the Senators would find it important enough considering the military also had to admit that training was not even good enough to keep non-deployed from committing suicide, so the chances of keeping those with multiple deployments alive back home were slim to none.

How about they question the fact that the Army released a study on re-deployments showing that each one increased the risk of PTSD by 50% all the way back in 2006, yet kept doing them anyway?

How about they pay attention to the fact that after all the training started, suicide increased and kept increasing even after the number of enlisted went down? Seems that would be a good thing to have answers for if they really think that "one is too many suicides."

How about they get answers from all the charities popping up all over the country raising money so they can raise awareness that veterans are still killing themselves instead of healing? How the hell can telling them something they already know do any of them any good? While we're on the subject, why should they make their living off the suicides in the first place?

Veterans are not being told what they need to know, where they can go for help and their families are still left clueless yet folks are making a lot of money for nothing getting any better.

Brandon Ketchum tried to get help from the VA and did not get it.  He turned to Facebook to say goodbye.  Why couldn't he turn to any of the charities and groups out there doing pushups, taking walks and doing interviews with the press? Why couldn't he turn to all the folks that were supposed to be made aware of what those charities claimed they were doing?

What is it going to take for this country to wake up and understand that veterans had better chances of staying alive with bullets and bombs than they do now and that is the most deplorable thing of all.

When they heal the first thing they want to do is share it with other veterans and be there for them so they can heal too.  That is after they get over being pissed off they tried to commit suicide because no one told them what they actually needed to hear so they could live and go on a stop suicide mission of their own.