Does John McCain Ever Have to Explain Anything?

How is it that politicians never have to explain anything about what they do ending up with such poor results? When we think about suicides tied to military service, we think about the DOD as well as the VA because they would not be disabled veterans had they not served in the military in the first place. Politicians however don't seem to be able to make that connection.

Veterans expected results after all the hearings however, deplorable results did not come with any explanations or even apologies.

President Obama served on the Veterans Affairs Committee but not the Armed Forces Committee. John McCain served on that one but didn't serve on the VA Committee. It seems like neither one was paying much attention to their own Committees.

Way back in 2007 then Senator Obama was demanding answers from the Pentagon on what they were doing about PTSD rates and suicides.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Christopher Bond (R-MO) sent the following letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, requesting a full accounting of service members’ psychological injuries, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), since October 2001. The senators also requested a detailed report on how the military monitors other psychological injuries. Recent media accounts indicate that the number of service members seeking care for PTSD from the Veterans Administration (VA) increased 70% over a 12-month period, or an increase of some 20,000 cases. In addition, reports of the total number of cases of PTSD treatment at the VA since 2001 – 50,000 cases – far exceed the number of wounded documented by the Pentagon.

We see the results of that demand and it hasn't been good at all. As for the VA, well, they responded in 2007 by opening VA Clinics to fill the demand of the already overloaded system that was never increased with two wars adding to the number of disabled veterans.

Just an example of this came when the Minneapolis VA opened two clinics, then shut them down due to lack of funding the company contracted to run them.

Two recently opened Minneapolis VA clinics in western Wisconsin were abruptly shut down this week by the company under contract to run them. Kentucky-based Corporate Health and Wellness says it lost hundreds of thousands of dollars opening the clinics. It blames the closings on a lack of additional funding from the VA.

St. Paul, Minn. — The two clinics that sit idle now opened to much fanfare this summer and fall. The VA said, and local veterans agreed, the facilities in Hayward and in Rice Lake would make it much easier for area vets to get basic health care. No longer would they have to travel long distances to VA facilities in places like Duluth-Superior or the Twin Cities.

But without warning, the clinics closed this week.

Yes, you read "contracted" right. In other words, the cost of caring for the disabled veterans was increased simply because contractors make more money than VA employees. The House Committee on Veterans Affairs was looking for answers on veterans committing suicide as well after a CBS report showed,

The hearing was prompted in part by a CBS news story in November on suicides in the veteran population that put last year’s number of veteran suicides at over 6,000. VA officials refuted that number, questioning its validity. But a VA Inspector General report released in May of 2007 found that as many as 5,000 veterans commit suicide a year—nearly 1,000 of whom are receiving VA care at the time.

There were investigations on veterans dying due to substandard care way back then as well but those investigations were followed by even more of them with more veterans in graves.

President Bush was being slammed for being $3 billion short on the VA budget in 2008 but it had happened before his presidency and after it.

Veterans have always had to fight wars and then come home to fight for benefits after getting disabled because politicians never had to explain what they didn't fix.

A report in 2008 took a look at VA claims ratings going back to 1945.

VA argued that it is already doing the right thing and has been updating the rating schedule, though officials acknowledged they could do better. From 1990 through 2007, VA had updated 47 percent of the ratings schedule, but 35 percent of the codes had not been touched since 1945. However, VA said it updated the codes for TBI in January and is working on an update for PTSD.

VA spokesman Ralph Heussner says the locked doors are an unexpected disappointment. 

McCain's answer for all of this was to privatize the VA back in 2008 just like now. VA Update: Senator McCain's Plan to Privatize Veterans' Healthcare

On the campaign trail, the Republican's presumptive nominee has talked of a new mission for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and argued that veterans with non-combat medical problems should be given vouchers to receive care at private, for-profit hospitals -- in other words, an end to the kind of universal health care the government has guaranteed veterans for generations.

"We need to relieve the burden on the VA from routine health care," McCain told the National Forum on Disability Issues last month. "If you have a routine health care need, take it wherever you want, whatever doctor or health care provider and get the treatment you need, while we at the VA focus our attention, our care, our love, on these grievous wounds of war."

And for John McCain on the DOD, he's been on the wrong side of taking care of the service members in the first place.

While McCain's voting record has never been good for veterans he continually managed to bring up the fact he was one of them.

Take the GI Bill for example. This is what he thought of it before President Bush gave him credit for passing it.

McCain says the legislation is too expensive and has proposed his own version, which would increase the monthly benefit available to most veterans to $1,500 from $1,100. It would not offer the equivalent of a full scholarship.

The ad by VoteVets.org Action Fund, features Iraq and Afghanistan veterans noting that both McCain and President Bush oppose the bill.

"McCain thinks covering a fraction of our education is enough," one veteran says. Another one, pictured recovering from head wounds, adds in a voiceover: "We didn't give a fraction in Iraq. We gave 100 percent."

While McCain called "suicide prevention overreach and blocked prevention bill" Reuters reported in 2010 about the failures in preventing suicides.

Efforts to prevent suicides among U.S. war veterans are failing, in part because distressed troops do not trust the military to help them, top military officials said on Thursday.

Poor training, a lack of coordination and an overstretched military are also factors, but a new 76-point plan lays out ways to improve this,Colonel John Bradley, chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington.

"They tell us again and again that we are failing," Bradley told a symposium on military medicine sponsored by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation.

Each branch of the services -- the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines -- rushed to create a suicide prevention program, but there was no coordination. The report recommends that the defense secretary's office take over coordination of suicide prevention efforts.

On-the-ground prevention training often failed because those running the sessions did not understand their importance, Bradley said.

"They are mocked and they are probably harmful," he said.

Not much has changed other than there are higher numbers of suicides and a lot more money spent on bills that are simply repeats of what already failed. So while we remember all that has gone on while politicians have been accountable to no one, McCain now wants credit for "progress" after all these years of abysmal failures?

John McCain, Jeff Flake: Some progress on Pentagon, VA reform; a lot more to do
AZ/DC
The Republic
Dan Nowicki
January 2, 2016

McCain touted his work on the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans (SAV) Act, which became law in February.

Sen. Jeff Flake (left) and Sen. John McCain, both Arizona Republicans, in November said the Pentagon paid professional sports franchises for marketing events that included full-field displays of the American flag, enlistment and re-enlistment ceremonies and reunions between service members and their families. They called the productions "paid patriotism."
(Photo: Bill Theobald/The Republic)

Arizona's U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake have wrapped up their first year as part of the Senate's current Republican majority and can look back on a 2015 that included incremental progress in reforming the embattled Department of Veterans Affairs and battling the sprawling Defense Department waste as well as challenges and disappointments.

"We've been reforming the military this last year," McCain said in a recent meeting with Arizona Republic editors and reporters. "According to the (conservative think tank) Heritage Foundation, the biggest reforms in the last 30 years. But we have a heck of a lot more to do, a lot more reforms to do."

As Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, McCain was a driving force behind the National Defense Authorization Act, which reflected his Pentagon reform agenda. The legislation, among other highlights, redirects billions of dollars in spending on administrative overhead and troubled weapons programs to improving military capabilities and other priorities, revamps the defense-acquisition process and updates the military's 70-year-old retirement system.
read more here

Blumenthal Wants "Full and immediate investigation" on VA Death?

Is this yet one more case of political grandstanding or what? A veteran entered an inpatient treatment program at the VA. According to reports, he got his hands on illegal drugs, left the grounds and later died. Blumenthal is all a fluster before anyone has investigated anything all hot under the collar to point his finger at the VA.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal is demanding a “full and immediate investigation”

"Veteran Zachary Greenough, who apparently suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), left the residential inpatient facility and later died of an apparent drug overdose, according to Sen. Blumenthal."

Unfortunately this type of thing has been going on for decades when veterans try to get help, sometimes reluctantly, and don't get what they need to heal. The VA programs work for a lot of veterans but not all of them. Seems Blumenthal is blaming the VA for the wrong reason and certainly not blaming members of Congress at all even though they have jurisdiction over what the VA does and does not do.

"“My staff has received information that Mr. Greenough obtained illegal drugs while living in a residential inpatient setting at the West Haven Campus,” said Sen. Blumethal in the letter. “The very egregious factual allegations concerning this tragic death, while as yet unconfirmed, raise serious questions about access to drugs and other broader issues that may implicate policies and procedures at the VA."

Wow, sounds like he's really serious.  That is until we remember it is far from new and has not improved even after all these years.

2014
IG: Vet overdosed while in VA rehab center

A veteran of the war in Afghanistan died of a heroin and cocaine overdose last year while receiving treatment at a Miami Veterans Affairs residential treatment facility, according to a VA inspector general report released Friday.

The veteran, who was in his 20s, had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological conditions as well as traumatic brain injury. He had a history of drug abuse while in the Miami VA Medical Center substance abuse residential rehabilitation program and had previously lost leave privileges for continued use of alcohol and illicit drugs.

But according to the IG report, the medical facility staff failed to check him for contraband after he had been allowed to leave for an afternoon and also failed to monitor the facility closely, increasing the potential for visitors to bring in banned substances or for patients to leave to get them.

2013
Lopatcong Township veteran's family calls for better PTSD treatment after his death

The 26-year-old Army infantryman told his mother, Laura Arace, that he had seen people die. And while neither explosives nor the enemy claimed his life, an uphill battle with post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction did, his mother said.

He died at home Sunday of what his family suspects was a drug overdose. Arace was hospitalized for rehab and PTSD therapy more than 30 times, Laura Arace said.

“When they released him, he would say, ‘I can’t take it, because my head won’t shut up,'” she said. “The system is broken. Anybody that knew him knew he was on a mission to die,” she said, surrounded by loved ones in her Lopatcong Township home.

Arace was so determined to join the Army, he took a metal rod out of his arm himself so he could pass the entrance test, according to his mother. Ever since parents of some of his high school friends died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he wanted to serve, she said.

But he struggled to readjust to civilian life.

Deaths at Atlanta VA Hospital Prompt Scrutiny

By CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY
Associated Press
ATLANTA May 25, 2013 (AP)

One patient with a history of substance abuse and suicidal thoughts was left alone in a waiting room inside the Atlanta VA Medical Center, where he obtained drugs from a hospital visitor and later died of an overdose.

Another patient wandered the 26-acre campus for hours, picking up his prescriptions from an outpatient pharmacy and injecting himself with testosterone before returning voluntarily to his room.

The cases at the Atlanta VA Medical Center are the latest in a string of problems at Veterans Affairs facilities nationwide, prompting outrage from elected officials and congressional scrutiny of what is the largest integrated health care system in the country with nearly 300,000 employees.

Pennsylvania veteran awarded $3.7 M in suit against VA

Judge Munley wasn't convinced. "The testimony at trial revealed that plaintiff was initially a good patient and actively seeking help from the VA. The VA did not provide the help and medical treatment needed by the plaintiff, and as a result, plaintiff began self-medicating with alcohol and illegal drugs," he said.

The judge awarded Mr. Laskowski $214,582 for past lost earnings; $2.1 million for future lost earnings; $500,000 for past noneconomic damages, including pain and suffering, embarrassment and humiliation and loss of the ability to enjoy the pleasures of life; and $700,000 for future noneconomic damages.

He awarded Mr. Laskowski's wife, Marisol Laskowski, $140,615 for loss of consortium.

2012
Prescription drug abuse, overdoses haunt veterans seeking relief from physical, mental pain

He talked about quitting. Later that summer, after Pilgrim broke his finger in a pickup football game at Fort Sill, Okla., an Army doctor prescribed OxyContin for the pain. Use of the powerful narcotic baffled his mother: “You gave him this stuff for a broken finger?”

Getting refills was easy, she added, and it wasn’t long before Pilgrim began abusing the painkiller. “He found out very quickly he could deal with his mental health symptoms with the drugs,” Judy said.

Pilgrim ended up going AWOL four times; eventually, he was discharged from the Army. Over the next two years, he shuttled in and out of various treatment centers.

In August 2007, a month into an inpatient treatment program for post-traumatic stress disorder in Waco, Pilgrim was kicked out for fighting. Despite his history of drug abuse, he was sent home with a prescription for hydrocodone, another opiate painkiller.

Two days later, on Aug. 18, six days before his 27th birthday, his body was discovered in a room at the Relax Inn, a single-story, stucco motel within sight of the high school stadium where he’d played football. The autopsy showed a lethal level of hydrocodone and methadone. His death was ruled accidental.

2011
Settlement Reached In Suit Against VA Over Iraq War Veteran’s Death

A settlement has been reached in a federal wrongful death lawsuit filed against a local VA hospital over the death of an Iraq war veteran who suffered from PTSD. Reporter: Paul J. Gately

WACO (November 17, 2011)-A federal judge in Waco has accepted an agreed settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit over the death of an Iraq war veteran, but the details of the settlement were not released.

The suit, filed by Randy and Judy Pilgrim, of Daingerfield, sought more than $75,000 in damages in the interest of their grandson from the U.S. government and the VA Medical Center in Waco in the August 2007 death of their son, Lance.

A copy of the lawsuit obtained by News 10 says Lance Pilgrim was to be treated at the V.A. Medical Center in Waco for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that his parents say was brought on by his U.S. Army service in Iraq.

Specifically the suit says Lance Pilgrim returned from combat with severe depression, was suicidal and addicted to several drugs.

You can follow VA investigations here. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General

But it wasn't just happening at the VA.

2010

Family angered by Marine's overdose death at naval hospital
By Bill Sizemore
The Virginian-Pilot
© December 29, 2010
PORTSMOUTH

Lance Cpl. Ezequiel Freire got out of Afghanistan alive, but a stateside hospital stay proved fatal.

The 20-year-old Marine's death from a prescription drug overdose at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center has left his family reeling, outraged and frustrated by what they see as an absence of accountability for those charged with his care.

Freire died of a toxic cocktail of powerful narcotics and sedatives as he was awaiting chemotherapy treatment for cancer. The case underscores the dangers inherent in the many potent painkillers on the market today, which have helped drive an alarming rise in overdoses.

Overdose deaths from prescription drugs now exceed those from illegal drugs.

It was happening in the Army as well.

2008
Army 3 drug overdose deaths and 4 suicides in Warrior Transition Unit

The Army said officials had determined that among those troops there have been 11 deaths that were not due to natural causes between June and Feb. 5.

That included four suicides, three accidental overdoses of prescribed medications, three deaths still under investigation and one motor vehicle accident, the Army said.

“Army medical and safety professionals continue to remind soldiers and their families of the importance of prescription-drug safety precautions, including following the printed directions and information for each medicine,” the Army said of the overdoses in a statement Thursday.

Noting the death of actor Heath Ledger, Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker last week first disclosed the issue of drug overdoses in the 35 special transition units, which care for more than 9,500 soldiers.

There are even more but while we remember what has been going on while members of Congress get their names in the press for paying attention, it seems the press isn't interested in paying attention to the lack of results.

Marine Veteran Starts "The War Horse" News Site

Veteran Launches 'The War Horse' to Tell Stories of Iraq, Afghanistan
Military.com
by Hope Hodge Seck
Jan 03, 2016

"I think the one common thread that I bring to the table is I know the fear that exists [among troops] when it comes to approaching journalists. Having people who are personally involved in these different worlds is going to open up the possibilities."

Thomas Brennan, a Marine veteran-turned-journalist, is preparing for the launch of

The War Horse, an independent journalism site dedicated to chronicling the effects

of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Photo courtesy Cindy Schepers)

One Marine veteran is on a mission to make sure the war stories of his generation are told -- and told right.

Thomas Brennan, a medically retired staff sergeant-turned-journalist, is preparing for the launch of The War Horse, an independent journalism site dedicated to chronicling the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The website brands itself "the authority on the post-9/11 conflict and the ONLY digital magazine profiling all men, women, interpreters, and dogs killed since 9/11."The idea for the site came to Brennan while he was working as a staff writer for The Daily News out of Jacksonville, North Carolina, a town adjacent to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune.

"It all started with me getting aggravated that stories weren't being gathered about World War II vets and World War I vets and we've waited so long to tell the stories of years prior," Brennan, 30, told Military.com. "War has been a constant in human existence since the very beginning, and I just think it's about time that we really report on it and understand and conceptualize everything that war is."

Brennan is in a unique position to tell those stories, as someone who has experienced the realities of war as a Marine and who has reported on the military as a civilian. Brennan served nearly nine years in the Marine Corps as an infantry assaultman before retiring in 2012.

On Nov. 1, 2010, Brennan was wounded on a deployment to Afghanistan when a rocket-propelled grenade detonated next to him. He was diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury, and has since also documented his struggles with post-traumatic stress.
read more here

Ohio Rescue Crews Search River for Veteran With PTSD

Warren County fire, water rescue possibly related as crews look for suspect
WKRC Cincinnatti
Brad Underwood
January 1, 2016

Authorities are looking for 27-year-old Aaron Berns as a suspect in the fire set to a home on Miranda Street. (Warren County Sheriff's Office)

According to family members of Berns, the 27-year-old has military experience and suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

MORROW, Ohio (Brad Underwood) - The search for a 27-year-old Morrow man is on pause Saturday night as search crews wait for daylight to continue.

Multiple fire departments, the Warren County Sheriff's Office and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources spent Saturday combing the banks of The Little Miami River looking for Aaron Berns.

Berns is a person of interest in a house fire that is being ruled arson. When police and fire responded the house fire on Miranda Street they encountered Berns.

Lieutenant John Faine with the Warren County Sheriff's Office says Berns took off and dove head first into the river.
read more here

Militia takes over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters

Militia takes over Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters
Oregon Live
By Les Zaitz
January 2, 2016

Ryan Payne, an Army veteran from Montana, questioned why more Harney County veterans aren't defending the Constitution by standing up for local ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son Steven. Payne, a militiaman, participated in the arm standoff last year in Nevada between a rancher and agents of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The Hammonds are going to prison for burning bureau land south of Burns. Les Zaitz | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Update at 9:15 p.m.: Statement from Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward: "After the peaceful rally was completed today, a group of outside militants drove to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, where they seized and occupied the refuge headquarters. A collective effort from multiple agencies is currently working on a solution. For the time being please stay away from that area. More information will be provided as it becomes available. Please maintain a peaceful and united front and allow us to work through this situation."

The Bundy family of Nevada joined with hard-core militiamen Saturday to take over the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, vowing to occupy the remote federal outpost 50 miles southeast of Burns for years.

Rancher Dwight Hammond Jr. greets protesters outside his Burns home on Saturday. He and his son Steven are to report to prison on Monday on federal arson charges. An estimated 300 marchers went by the Hammond home, pausing to leave flowers and cheers. Les Zaitz | The Oregonian/OregonLive

The occupation came shortly after an estimated 300 marchers — militia and local citizens both — paraded through Burns to protest the prosecution of two Harney County ranchers, Dwight Hammond Jr. and Steven Hammond, who are to report to prison on Monday.

Among the occupiers is Ammon Bundy, son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, and two of his brothers. Militia members at the refuge claimed they had as many as 100 supporters with them. The refuge, federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was closed and unoccupied for the holiday weekend.
read more here

Oregon ranchers' fight with feds sparks militias' interest
Oregon Live
By Les Zaitz
December 31, 2015

The first fire came in 2001: a simple prescribed burn, intended to take out invasive juniper, by Steve and Dwight Hammond's account.

But federal prosecutors said the men's real motive for starting the blaze, which consumed 139 acres and forestalled grazing for two seasons, was to cover up evidence of an illegal slaughter of deer. The government presented evidence that Steven Hammond called an emergency dispatcher to ask if it was OK to burn -- roughly two hours after they already lit the fire. His attorney said in court that Hammond called the land bureau beforehand.

The government acknowledged that the next fire, in 2006, was intended as a defensive move. Steve Hammond set backfires to keep a lightning-caused fire from burning onto the Hammonds' ranch and hitting their winter feed.

U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan said at the men's original sentencing in 2012 that such a term would be unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment.

"It would be a sentence which would shock the conscience," Hogan said before sentencing Dwight to three months and Steve to one year.

The men served their time and went home to raise cattle. But their case, it turned out, was far from settled.

read more here

Staff Sgt. Louis Bonacasa Laid to Rest

Transfer Ceremony Held for NY Soldier Killed in Afghanistan (photos)
Epoch Times
By Holly Kellum
January 2, 2016

Former and current members of the 105th Airlift Wing and 106th Rescue Wing, along with members of the Bonacasa family gathered at Gabreski Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach on Dec. 31 for a ramp ceremony for staff sergeant Louis Bonacasa.
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Louis Bonacasa, Coram airman killed in attack, buried Saturday in Calverton 
News Day
By Darran Simon
January 2, 2016

A funeral for Sgt. Louis Bonacasa who was killed in a suicide blast in Afghanistan was held at New Beginnings Christian Center in Coram on Jan. 2, 2015. (Credit: Raychel Brightman)

Staff Sgt. Louis Bonacasa was a “bulldog” — an intense, hardened combat veteran, but the Coram man had a tender side, his wife said at the airman’s funeral Saturday.

He would float around the kitchen, listening to Italian music as he cooked. He doted on his young daughter. He loved poetry. And he could dance, too.

Bonacasa, 31, a member of the New York Air National Guard’s 105th Base Defense Squadron, died Dec. 21 in a suicide attack in Afghanistan. He was on his fourth tour — four months from returning home for good.
read more here

Replace Wanting to Die with Reason to Live

Dancing with the shadows
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
January 2, 2016

If you read Wounded Times with any regularity at all, it is no secret I am a PTSD geek. Can't help it because of my own life as well as my husband suffering PTSD because of Vietnam. For me, I faced death for more years and a lot more times, yet didn't end up with PTSD. The reason has been clear for decades. It was never about what was done to me but more about what was done for me afterwards.

Well, it looks like researchers have taken a look back to discover what was known decades ago.

If you want to prevent suicides, you better give someone a reason to live.

I read a lot of reports on PTSD and suicides, not just caused by combat, but by facing death as a regular person with very unregular events.

I've thought about suicide but even worse, I actually prayed to die. Why? Because I lost all hope that the next day would be any better than the one I hoped would be my last.

After our daughter was born, my body didn't tell me I was in deep trouble. I walked around with an infection for 8 months. My doctor said the bacteria count was higher than he'd ever seen in a live patient.

Some may have thought the fever caused the hopelessness but honestly, it had gone on a lot longer than the stay in the hospital. I heard a nurse say "she's fighting for her life" but that wasn't true. Maybe my body was fighting off the infection but I wasn't trying to do anything but let go of the life I was living.

My husband saved my life when he forced me to go to the doctor. I was burning up with a fever of 104. By the time I got to the hospital it was 105. Instead of being grateful he save me, all I could think about was how miserable he made my life by his own suffering.

I had been studying PTSD for six years, getting his friends to go for help but he wouldn't listen. I didn't really try to force it in the beginning because he wasn't doing anything I couldn't deal with. PTSD was something he lived with for over a decade at that point and managed pretty well. 

Nightmares, flashbacks, mood-swings with bad days and the rest of what it was doing to him did not get out of control until I miscarried twins. He saw me hemorrhaging and that sent mild PTSD into overdrive. It had been the worst hell imaginable for both of us.

I thought once our daughter was born, he'd go back to the way he was before, but that didn't happen. My family couldn't understand, so they did the fix-it response with "get a divorce" and my friends were too busy with their own problems. I had no one to talk to.

Then in the hospital, no hope left in me, I prayed to die harder than I prayed for anything before. The next day my husband brought our daughter to see me and then I had a reason to live. All I could do was think about her and how she'd never know how much I love her unless I lived to prove it to her.

I had a reason to fight to live again. My mental health was challenged by events but my spiritual challenges were caused by how I viewed surviving them.

As suicide rates rise, researchers separate thoughts from actions
Science News
BY BRUCE BOWER
DECEMBER 29, 2015

Better understanding of risk factors could help those contemplating taking their own lives

Between 1986 and 2000, U.S. suicide rates dropped from 12.5 to 10.4 deaths for every 100,000 people. But since then, the suicide rate has climbed steadily, reaching 12.6 deaths per 100,000 people, or more than 41,000 deaths, in 2013. That continuous rise — and the lack of effective counter-measures — has prompted researchers to revisit the suicide theories found in textbooks.

Klonsky and May conducted an online survey of 910 U.S. adults, ages 18 to 70, that supports the three-step theory. Participants who reported having contemplated or planned a suicide — 27 percent of the sample — described especially high levels of preexisting pain or hopelessness, the researchers report in their June paper. Those who said they had never considered suicide, even if they had experienced pain and hopelessness, reported having close friends and relatives and usually were involved in activities they found meaningful. read the rest of the report here

Most of the time I faced death, some did something to me but other people showed up to help me when they knew I was in need.  That restored my sense of worth in this world.

We should all find it perplexing how a veteran can do everything possible to survive all the hardships of combat but find it harsher to be back home. Most suicide happen after they come home needing help the most but finding it harder to find. Why after all these years of research on PTSD would they lack anything?

We learned about the suffering from all causes of PTSD because Vietnam veterans forced the government to find out what combat did to them and that caused researchers to better understand what trauma did to all humans. What caused some to develop PTSD while others did not? What caused some of them to become so hopeless that surviving the events no longer mattered enough they would want to survive life afterwards?

Simple really. In combat they survived for those they were with and they were among others willing to die for their sake as well. They risked their lives for each other. That was a reason to live. Back home, they were supposed to be past dangers, thought of themselves as being weak needing help because they couldn't handle a simpler life with the average citizens. That notion was fed to them by the military.

In my case, facing death for most of my life, I was seen as an unshakeable rock because no one saw the price I was paying inside. First to help others, no one suspected I needed help and I, well, me being me, found it close to impossible to ask for help or even a shoulder to cry on after the limitations of time close to the events.

I was dragging the shadows of death around with me so long I forgot how to dance to my own beat.

If you want to prevent suicides, then show up before there is a funeral and everyone is supporting each other, crying for the loss. Show up when they are alive and let them know they matter enough that you will listen to them. Help them understand that their last day was actually easier than the event they survived and the next will be better because you cared enough to acknowledge they live.

Dancing With Shadows
Kathie Costos

Sunset

Who would have thought I'd be dancing
with the simple joy of living
and more time to spend sharing and giving
instead of pushing away and grieving?

Everywhere I looked the shadow was on the ground
and I got worn our dragging it around
as if my life was extra time lent.
The damn thing followed everywhere I went
whispering two cents of doubt in my head
making me think I'd be better off dead.

So I struggled each day to just make it through
remembers stuff I did and still had yet to do.
Then one day I looked back and it wasn't there.
The light hit me just right and all I could do was stare
it was right by my side moving with me
and suddenly the shadow of what was kept me company.

Then I picked my foot up and moved it around
humming a tune laughing at the sound
and then all I could do was dance
knowing lent time was really a second chance.

More time to live this life
feeling joy as much as strife
giving what I could for good
and laughing at what I misunderstood
that living this life comes with feeling it all more
and I wouldn't trade feeling for numb that's for sure.

I can feel the sunrise in the morning sky and find hope
that no matter what comes each day I can cope
because I already lived though what was a lot worse
and everyday extra is not a curse
when I can dance with the shadows of death that lost
because this life I live now is worthy of the cost.

Papa Ward, Pastor to Homeless Veterans Died on Christmas Day

The man who gave hope dies on the greatest day of hope
Daily Commercial
Tom McNiff
December 30, 2015

Papa Ward, the pastor of Logos Christian Fellowship church in Leesburg, died Christmas day. Those who knew him best say it was fitting that Ward, who brought hope to so many, died on Christ's birthday -- celebrated in the Christian faith as a day of hope.

Papa Chris Ward
Gary Kadow, Pastor Chris Ward, and Deb and Bob Peters pose for a photo on the day after Thanksgiving, a day spent worming with homeless people in the Ocala National Forest.

Long before there was a Project SOS, a veterans aid organization that, in part, helps homeless veterans living in the Ocala National Forest, there was Chris Ward.

The one-time Army Airborne Ranger, who became a minister after leaving the service, had been tromping across the pine needles and through the thickets of the forest looking for campgrounds where homeless veterans retreated to wrestle in solitude with the demons they brought back from the battlefield.

He brought them food, fresh water, clothing, blankets -- anything to soften their rugged day-to-day existence. But most of all, he brought something most people couldn't. He brought understanding, the kind of understanding that only another combat veteran could offer.
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Air Force Honors National Guard Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan

Two Guardsmen killed in Afghanistan suicide bombing to be named honorary OSI agents
Air Force Times
By Phillip Swarts, Staff writer
December 30, 2015

The six airmen who were killed in a Dec. 21 suicide bomb attack are, clockwise from top left: Maj. Adrianna M. Vorderbruggen, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Cinco, Staff Sgt. Chester J. McBride, Tech Sgt. Joseph G. Lemm, Staff Sgt. Peter W. Taub, and Staff Sgt. Louis M. Bonacasa. (Photo: Air Force photos)

The two New York Air National Guardsmen who died Dec. 21 in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan have been named honorary special agents for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the agency announced Monday.

Tech Sgt. Joseph Lemm, 45, and Staff Sgt. Louis Bonacasa, 31, died after their patrol was attacked by a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle near Bagram Air Base. Both were assigned to the 105th Security Forces Squadron, Stewart Air National Guard Base, New York.

Four OSI Special Agents were also killed in the blast: Maj. Adrianna Vorderbruggen, 36, and Staff Sergeants Michael Cinco, 28, Peter Taub, 30, and Chester McBride, 30.

On Monday, Brig. Gen. Keith Givens, the commander of OSI, announced that the two Guardsmen would be made honorary agents.

“In our command's 67 year history, we have selected less than 60 Honorary OSI Special Agents. None of those have been active-duty Security Forces or Air National Guard members,” Givens said. “That has changed today. After consulting with all of OSI's senior leaders, the following ‘Brothers-in-Arms’ members have been made Honorary AFOSI Special Agents.”
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Long Island Remembers Staff Sgt. Louis Bonacasa

WAKE BEING HELD FOR STAFF SGT. LOUIS BONACASA, WHO DIED IN AFGHANISTAN ATTACK
ABC News
Kristin Thorne
December 31, 2015

"He didn't think twice about what he had to do," "You can see by the outpouring of love here that's evident." friend Billy MacDowall

CORAM, Long Island (WABC) -- A wake was held Thursday for Staff Sergeant Louis Bonacasa, one of the six Americans killed last week in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.

Friends and family gathered to mourn the death of the 31-year-old Coram resident, who was killed last Monday with five other airmen when his patrol was attacked by a suicide bomber outside Bagram Air Base.

Bonacasa's remains were returned to the United States in a ceremony at the F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard base in Westhampton Beach, followed by a wake at the Branch Funeral Home in Miller Place. A second visitation will follow on Friday from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., before funeral services Saturday at 11 a.m. at the New Beginnings Christian Center in Coram. He will be buried at Calverton National Cemetery.

"He was really a great man, a great provider and has a beautiful family," friend Jennifer Nyx said. "And it's just a great loss for everyone."
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