Veterans Twice As Likely to Take Their Own Lives

Blumenthal, Murphy meet with VA, mental health officials in West Haven on vet suicides
New Haven Register
By Mark Zaretsky
POSTED: 09/26/14
WEST HAVEN

And veterans “are twice as likely to take their lives” compared to “non-vets of the same age,” Blumenthal said. “Quite frankly, this nation needs to do better.”

Major J. Alvarado, director of the Connecticut Army National Guard Medical Detachment’s Behavioral Health Team (back to camera), talks about veterans’ suicides to, from left, VA Connecticut Healthcare System Director Gerald Culliton, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Mark Zaretsky — New Haven Register

Connecticut has one of the lowest rates of veterans committing suicide in the nation, “but any number above zero is unacceptable,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., joined by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and a host of VA officials Friday at a roundtable on the subject.

But for reasons we don’t yet know, “there is a problem with suicide in our military” that goes beyond just veterans, said Blumenthal, a member of both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Veterans Affairs.

How big a problem?

The suicide rate among present and former members of the military “is twice as high” as the rate among people who have never served in the military, he said.
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11 Million coming to Florida for homeless veterans

Jacksonville gets $5 million to help homeless vets
Author: News4Jax.com Staff
Published On: Sep 30 2014

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.
U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, announced Tuesday that the Veteran Administration is making a $5 million grant to the city of Jacksonville and the Emergency Services and  Homeless Coalition of Jacksonville Inc.

The VA is also making a $6 million grant to the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida.

The grants are part of the Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program to serve homeless veterans.

SSVF grantees provide supportive services to very low-income veterans and their families who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness. The grant requires that service providers do outreach, case management, assistance in obtaining VA benefits and providing or coordinating efforts to obtain needed entitlements and other community services.
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SEPTEMBER 30, 2014
VA Announces New Grants to Help End Veteran Homelessness

Initiative Targets 70,000 Homeless and At-Risk Vets and Families in High Need Communities

WASHINGTON – In addition to the $300 million in Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program grant awards announced on August 11, 2014 serving 115,000 Veterans and their family members, today Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert A. McDonald announced the award of $207 million in SSVF grants that will help an additional 70,000 homeless and at-risk Veterans and their families. The grants will be distributed to 82 non-profit agencies and include “surge” funding for 56 high need communities.

During the brief history of this program, VA has helped tens of thousands of Veterans exit homelessness and prevented just as many from becoming homeless. The “surge” funding will enable VA to strategically target resources to high need communities where there are significant numbers of Veterans who are homeless or at-risk of homelessness.

Under the SSVF program, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is awarding grants to private non-profit organizations and consumer cooperatives that provide services to very low-income Veteran families living in – or transitioning to – permanent housing. Those community organizations provide a range of services that promote housing stability among eligible very low income Veteran families (those making less than 50 percent of the area median income). The grants announced today will fund the fourth year of the SSVF program.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs is committed to using evidence based approaches such as SSVF to prevent homelessness and produce successful outcomes for Veterans and their families,” McDonald said. “This is a program that works, because it allows VA staff and local homeless service providers to work together to address the unique challenges that make it difficult for some Veterans and their families to remain stably housed.”

Under the terms of the SSVF grants, homeless providers offer Veterans and their family members outreach, case management, assistance in obtaining VA benefits and assistance in receiving other public benefits. Community-based groups can offer temporary financial assistance on behalf of Veterans for rent payments, utility payments, security deposits and moving costs. In the first 2 years of SSVF operations (through FY 2013), nearly 100,000 Veterans and their family members received direct assistance to exit homelessness or maintain permanent housing, including over 25,000 children.

“With the addition of these crucial resources, communities across the country continue a historic drive to prevent and end homelessness among Veterans,” said Laura Green Zeilinger, Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. “The SSVF program gives Veterans and their families the rapid assistance they need to remain in permanent housing or get back into permanent housing as quickly as possible.”

In 2009, President Obama announced the federal government’s goal of ending Veteran homelessness by the end of 2015. The SSVF grants are intended to help accomplish that goal. According to the 2014 Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness, homelessness among Veterans has declined 33 percent since 2010.

Through the homeless Veterans initiative, VA committed more than $1 billion in FY 2014 to strengthen programs that prevent and end homelessness among Veterans. VA provides a range of services to homeless Veterans, including health care, housing, job training, and education.

More information about VA’s homeless programs is available at www.va.gov/homeless. Details about the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program are online at www.va.gov/homeless/ssvf.asp.

Soldier’s Heart: Remembering Jacob George,

Please keep in mind that there are many other veterans with the same feelings and were against being sent into Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot dismiss their pain simply because we do not agree with any of them. If we ignore them, then we will insure what happened when Vietnam veterans came home shall be repeated. As with them, regret now does little good to erase the pain we inflicted on them.

Soldier’s Heart: Remembering Jacob George, Afghan War Vet Turned Peace Activist Who Took Own Life
Democracy Now
September 29, 2014

We air a remembrance of Jacob George, an Afghanistan War veteran and peace activist who took his own life on September 17. He was 32 years old. George co-founded the Afghan Veterans Against the War Committee, part of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

George was also a musician who biked around the country playing music for peace, a campaign he called "A Ride Till the End." In 2012, at the NATO summit in Chicago, he was among the veterans who hurled their military medals toward the summit gates in an act of protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

George spoke openly about his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and with getting Veterans Affairs counselors to understand what he saw as a "moral injury" from his time in Afghanistan.

In a storybook that accompanied his musical album "Soldier’s Heart," George wrote: "A wise medicine woman from Arkansas once told me that grief is pain trying to leave the body. If you don’t allow yourself to grieve, it gets stuck. But once you grieve, the body can heal itself. I won’t lie, some of this stuff is heavy. But telling my story is a part of my healing process. And it’s not just veterans who need to heal: all of us need to heal from war and the roster of ailments produced by a nation at war." Hear George playing the banjo and singing his song, "Soldier’s Heart."
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Quadriplegic Iraq Veteran Jay Briseno Celebrated with Lee Greenwood

The highlight was that Lee Greenwood sang to him!

Quadriplegic Veteran Jay Briseno Welcomed to New Home
NBC Washington
By Chris Gordon
September 29, 2014

Wounded veteran Jay Briseno was welcomed to his new Manassas home with much deserved fanfare Monday. Briseno was injured in 2003 while serving in Iraq. He was shot at point-blank range, left semi-conscious and later deemed quadriplegic.

Though many years have passed, he still required 24/7 care from parents Joe and Eva -- something that may become a little easier inside his brand-new home.
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Military Taught Joshua R. Pallotta to Put Uniform On, Not How to Take it Off

Mourners honor Afghanistan veteran who suffered PTSD
Burlington Free Press
Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer
September 29, 2014

"Josh took his own life," the Rev. Lisette D. Baxter told the gathering Monday morning at Ira Allen Chapel on the University of Vermont campus. "I think we ought to say that out loud ... and not whisper it so it's a secret among us."

Left, Maj. Gen. Steven Cray, adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard, gives his condolences to Gregory Pallotta and his wife, Valerie, following the funeral for their son, Joshua Pallotta, a member of Alpha Company, who took his life after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries he sustained while serving in Afghanistan.
(Photo: RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS )

Tom Perry, coach of the Colchester High School football team, looked out at the hundreds of mourners Monday at Vermont Army National Guard Pfc. Joshua R. Pallotta's funeral.

"Close your eyes for a moment," Perry said.

Nearly everyone did.

Perry told them to conjure up their warmest memories of Pallotta. Perry said for him, the memory would be of Pallotta, an offensive lineman, in a football practice uniform.

"That face, that sly half smile of his," Perry said. "That's the Josh I see. That's the one I will choose to remember."

Mostly, though, sorrow filled the room as family, friends and brothers-in-arms honored the fun-loving, sensitive man who came back from the 2010 Vermont Army National Guard deployment to Afghanistan struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.

A week ago, those struggles cost Pallotta, 25, his life.

Their son's obituary made a direct reference to his post-combat struggle. The couple, speaking with a reporter after the funeral, said their son was proud to serve his country, but the military needs to do more for soldiers who come home with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries.

"There's a song he posted on his Facebook page," Valerie Pallotta said of her son. "One line is 'They teach me how to put a uniform on, but they don't teach me how to take it off.' "
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Lake Nona VA Hospital Made Elderly Veterans Sick?

Veterans contract Legionnaires' disease from VA facility's water
News 96.5.com
September 29, 2014

ORLANDO, Fla. — News 96.5 learned three elderly veterans contracted a dangerous bacteria after moving in to a new Veterans Affairs facility in Lake Nona.

The veterans were diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease in July, and Health Department officials believe the bacteria was likely lingering in the water. One of the victims died after contracting the disease, but it was not the cause of death, officials said.

The Orlando Veterans Affairs Community Center opened in December, and it's the only part of the behind-schedule hospital project that's finished.

"It's isolated to this facility. Good news of it is two patients did recover. Unfortuantely one person did pass away, but that person had underlying health conditions," said Dain Weister, with the Orange County Health Department.
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Marine Gives Six Reasons Why He's Happier He Went to War

Why ’6 Reasons I’m Happier Because I Went to War’ went viral
The Washington Post
Dan Lamothe
September 29, 2014

It’s counter-intuitive: Why would combat veterans who risk their lives repeatedly, experience gruesome events and witness their fellow service members die be happy that they went to war?

And yet that’s exactly what Marine veteran John Walters reflects on in a new post on LinkedIn that has gone viral. Tens of thousands of readers have shared the piece, titled “6 Reasons I’m Happier Because I Went to War.” Many of them say they also served in the military and relate to what he shared.

The post was first published last week. Walters, a marketing manager with Shell, wrote that he has been asked regularly whether he is glad he deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and usually surprises people when he tells them that the answer, enthusiastically, is yes.

“Naturally wartime and combat are associated with sadness and devastation,” wrote Walters, who left the Marine Corps as a sergeant. “War affects millions of innocent people and [post-traumatic stress disorder] afflicts service men and women with crippling effects. I’m not immune to all the negative fallout of being a Marine during wartime, but many lessons I learned as a Marine make me a happier person.”
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Eight years of my life was spent enlisted in the US Marine Corps. I was deployed to Fallujah, Iraq and Helmand Province, Afghanistan. One of the most frequent questions I am asked about my service is, "Are you glad you did it?" It surprises most people when I respond with an enthusiastic YES. Naturally wartime and combat are associated with sadness and devastation. War affects millions of innocent people and PTSD afflicts service men and women with crippling effects. I'm not immune to all the negative fallout of being a Marine during wartime, but many lessons I learned as a Marine make me a happier person. Here are a few: (Note I use the term Marine, but it could be exchanged for soldier, seaman, airman, or any other service member.)

Go here to read the reasons
6 Reasons I'm Happier Because I Went to War

PTSD Healers Get Help to Heal Themselves

On a personal note speaking as one with over 30 years of doing it. It does hurt. It does drain my soul. It makes me cry. Causes nightmares and many sleepless nights. You know what though, what I get back in return when their lives turn around makes it all worth it.

I also have good support to do it. I know I can pick up the phone anytime I need to and be able to vent when things get too hard. The hardest thing was admitting I needed help since I am the "helper" of these magnificent veterans and families. Facing that made it easier to explain to them why it was more than ok for them to need help too.

Put it this way. Do you think less of them because they need help? Then why do you expect to not need it for yourself?

Richmond workshop to assist ‘forgotten heroes’ who suffer after helping PTSD victims
Richmond Standard
by Mike Aldax
September 29, 2014

The forgotten heroes who tirelessly work with the victims of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will have an opportunity to receive help for their own stress through a workshop in Richmond next month.

Healers 4 Helpers, a collaboration between nonprofits Perfectly Babies foundation and Sister 4 Sister, will hold two classes Nov. 21 -22 at the Barrett Avenue Christian Church at 3701 Barrett Ave.

The first day’s workshop helps helpers identify and reduce symptoms of compassion fatigue, while the second day’s workshop offers an in-depth look at assessing and treating secondary traumatic stress reaction.
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Atlanta Veteran Shot At During Attempted Carjacking

Gunfire narrowly misses veteran during attempted carjacking
WSB TV 2 Atlanta
September 28, 2014

ATLANTA — A local veteran, who just returned home from war, is now dodging gunfire in his own neighborhood.

Jonathan Knight has been shot at before. The veteran spent five and a half years in the military. But he never thought he'd put that training to use while sitting in his car behind the building where he works in northwest Atlanta.

Knight says he wasn't willing to let his brand new Ford Mustang go without a fight.

He says he was sitting in his car listening to music around 6 p.m. Sunday when two men in a blue Jeep Grand Cherokee approached.

“The driver asked me for directions. So I attempted to tell him and he pretended not to hear me, so he pulled up right next to me, very close. I could tell he was trying to block me off,” said Knight.
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Missoula State VA office cuts back rural outreach effort

There is what the Department of Veterans Affairs does on a national level and then there is what the states do. This is one of those cases.

Missoula VA office cuts back rural outreach effort
Missoulian
Martin Kidston
September 27, 2014

“We’re advertising the position, but since it’s a state job, the hiring process is very slow,” Blanche said. “We were able to do our outreach for September, but we’re giving vets notice about October. I’m hoping to have a position filled by the end of the year.”

A lack of staffing at an outreach program operated by the Montana Veterans Affairs Division has prompted the Missoula office to scale back its rural outreach efforts until the issue is resolved.

Roxanne Blanche, the regional services officer for the Montana VA’s Missoula office, said she is now the only employee available to meet veterans across a large western swath of the state.

“What we’re doing is asking vets to give us a call and file for medical benefits,” said Blanche. “Since I don’t have the staffing, those vets in outlying areas, if they live too far away, will have to schedule a phone appointment.” The number to call is 542-2501.
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