Senator Jackie Rosen Visits Fire Station To Talk About HERO Act
KTVN 2 News
by Bryan Hofmann
February 18th 2020
"We don't want to secondarily traumatize our spouses or our children with the stories of the things that we see, which makes hard to offload," said Reid. "If we can get some help from the senators office, that would be a great assistance to us not watching our brothers and sisters take their own lives."
Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is often talked about when it comes to members of the armed forces, but it also affects others -- like first responders.
Senator Jackie Rosen introduced a bill to extend assistance to first responders ahead of touring a firehouse today and speaking with local officials. First responders usually see people on their most traumatic days, and often carry that memory with them. Officials told us there is not a way to track PTSD and suicide rates, and that services for these first responders are scarce.
"We have had more suicides in the fire service than line of duty deaths," said Derek Reid, Fire Captain with Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District.
That isn’t even taking into account the full scale of PTSD and suicide rates for firefighters. 100 percent of deaths in the line of duty are recorded, but suicide numbers are not always put on the record.
“We are receiving about 30 to 40 percent of confirmed cases of suicide within the fire service, so we are not even capturing all the data to get the true number of what the suicide rate is within the firefighter community," said Reid. read it here
Helen Ubinas: Veteran’s final words show the true cost of war
Journal Star
By Helen Ubinas
Posted Feb 17, 2020
It’s been six weeks since Rosalind Williams’ 30-year-old son, Army veteran Michael Corey Hadley of Philadelphia, took his own life.
When grieving the death of a child, that’s a moment. A blink of an eye, a flip of a calendar. Barely enough time for Williams to pick herself up and return to the high school where she teaches science.
And yet in that small window, 900 other military parents have been dealt the same blow — left behind to try and find the rhythm of a life that they’ve lost after losing their children to suicide. According to the most recent data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, about 20 veterans, active-duty service members and members of the National Guard and Reserve die by their own hands every day.
In the quiet that followed the initial flurry of collective shock and grief after his death on Jan. 2, Williams sat with her anguish. She went through old photographs, collected new ones from his funeral and military interment. She read, and reread, the numerous news stories written about her son after the family spoke unsparingly about his death.
“His wounds were slow-acting and invisible, but nonetheless crippling and fatal,” the family said in a statement that spoke of his struggles with depression and PTSD after six years and three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just as she did when she and the family struggled to find the right way and words to describe the loss of her son, Williams has continued to consider the cause of his death. His PTSD and the mental health issues that medicines and other interventions failed to help — those were merely symptoms, torturous as they were, of what really ailed him. Instead, his mother believed: What finally cost him his life was the traumatic brain injury he suffered after the Army sharpshooter’s multiple deployments. Even in his final letter to his family, which she read aloud to me at her dining room table, he spoke about it.
“I’m so sorry for doing this to you,” Hadley wrote. “I am so grateful to have been born into a loving, strong family. read it here
Fort Carson Soldier Charged with Abusing His Child until Bone Disorder Found
The Associated Press
By JENNIFER BROWN
17 Feb 2020
Crystal gave up on restoring her nursing certification — the main reason she wanted it was to take care of Jace’s g-tube. Jarvis is still waiting for the Army to restore his security clearance, and when it does the Bryants hope to leave Colorado for another Army post. The state where their baby was born has too many bad memories.
FOUNTAIN, Colo. (AP) — When a child protection caseworker told Crystal Bryant they were taking her 5-month-old boy, the young mother dropped to her knees on the hospital floor.
“Take me,” she pleaded. “For my son to stay home, take me, I don’t care.”
She begged God and anyone listening, but “they still took him,” Bryant recalled, shaking her head and wiping tears as she recounted the worst moment of her life. Child welfare and police officers made Bryant and her husband, Jarvis Bryant, leave the Colorado Springs hospital room before a foster mother arrived to take their baby away.
Their lives were shattered.
The Bryants, who moved to Fountain when Jarvis was assigned to Fort Carson, were charged with felony child abuse, accused of breaking multiple bones in their only child’s body. Crystal’s recently earned nursing certificate was revoked. Jarvis, a U.S. Army specialist, lost his security clearance, stripping him of his job in aircraft and vehicle supply and relegating him to paper shuffling.
The Bryants’ son was one of 4,772 Colorado children removed from their homes by child welfare authorities and living in foster care last year. read it here
National Prayer Breakfast — Warriors should seek help during dark times
Fort Carson
By Norman Shifflett
Garrison Public Affairs Office
February 16, 2020
“What I took away was that we are never alone when we are at our darkest,” said Spc. Alexis Garwood, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Inf. Div, who was attending her first prayer breakfast.
FORT CARSON, Colo. — During the National Prayer Breakfast, Soldiers eat breakfast at the William “Bill” Reed Special Events Center Feb. 6, 2020. (Photo by Norman Shifflett)
FORT CARSON, Colo. — The National Day of Prayer provides an opportunity for people from various faiths and backgrounds to come together and unite for a prayer for the nation.
About 500 Soldiers, Family members and guests from the local community attended the annual Fort Carson National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 6, 2020, at the William “Bill” Reed Special Events Center.
“The most important part of this breakfast is that it shows the people of America we can come together as different races, colors and creeds and pray for the safety of our nation and hope for the greatness to continue,” said Col. Robert Glazener, senior mission command chaplain, 4th Infantry Division. read it here
Nonprofit organization remodels house for veteran Army nurse
NBC 10 NEWS
by SAM READ
February 15th 2020
NARRAGANSETT, R.I. (WJAR) — A veteran Army nurse from Narragansett is getting a new roof over her head, literally.
Dozens of volunteers who heard she needed some home repairs stepped up to help her.
“Some of these guys have brand new babies at home, some of them came hundreds of miles to help out this weekend,” said Ken Gayles, the Project Manager for Heroes’ Horizons.
Heroes’ Horizons is a non-profit organization based out of Rhode Island that helps veterans.
“My son was a veteran, he came home he was not well and we lost him eventually,” said Gayles. “I started this because of him, if a veteran needing heating oil, electricity bill paid, had nothing in the refrigerator, we like to provide it for them that day if possible.” read it here
When veterans decide to take their own lives, there is a much bigger problem this country has, than most are aware off. There was a time when it was necessary to put all the reports together so that people would do something about it. That time arrived on Wounded Times in 2007. Why isn't the press on suicide watch was viewed over 9,000 times.
I discovered the reports searching for them to do a video on suicides. Before that, it was a topic in the Veterans' Community, but we spoke about it too quietly. Many of us lost parents, as well as other family members, but we thought it was something to be ashamed of, instead of something that needed to be shouted so that everyone could hear us.
Putting together the report and the video, ripped me apart because I knew what that pain felt like. My husband's nephew, also a Vietnam veteran, took his own life. I also know what it is like when they hear there is an alternative to taking your own life with #TakeBackYourLife.
The time to invest in awareness efforts came soon afterwards, when the American people stood up and demanded the government take action. Since then, billions have been spent on some things that are worth every dime. Unfortunately, even more has been spent by the government that are far from worthy of the loss of one single veteran's life. In the process, we managed to also ignore the families, like mine, left behind to deal with unanswerable questions.
How we arrived here is no mystery. Some just decided they had to do something but did not take it seriously enough to know what they were talking about.
CATHOLICS leading the battle against veteran suicide have welcomed the appointment of an independent commissioner to investigate deaths and make recommendations on metal health and wellbeing.
Deacon Gary Stone, the man known as the Veteran’s padre, “hopes and prays” a new government initiative will combat veteran suicide, and benefit the wider community.
“Every suicide seriously impacts families and friends who also need support,” Deacon Stone (pictured), who heads the Veterans Care Association and is a former infantry officer, said.
“For every completed suicide there are 10 others (and their associated families and friends) struggling with suicidal ideation and self-harm.”
What do we see all over social media? Talk about a number attached to veterans committing suicide. We see members of the military, veterans groups, police officers, firefighters and regular citizens, dropping down to do 22 pushups. We see them running, walking and all kinds of other stunts to raise money while claiming they are raising awareness that veterans are killing themselves.
What is the point of all this? Did anyone of them think that their peers are also among those committing suicide and it is not just veterans?
The CDC released a report last year stating, "After a stable period from 2000 to 2007, suicide rates for
persons aged 10–24 increased from 2007 to 2017..."
In another report from the CDC, "Suicide is a large and growing public health problem. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. It was responsible for more than 47,000 deaths in 2017, resulting in about one death every 11 minutes. Every year, many more people think about or attempt suicide than die by suicide. In 2017, 10.6 million American adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.2 million made a plan, and 1.4 million attempted suicide."
Tens of thousands of groups have been doing it for over a decade and the trend is growing. What causes most advocates to cringe, aside from the obvious, is there seems to no end to the flood of people making money off this, and no end to the heartache of veterans doing it.
The groups usually use names they think will attract the most attention.
"That number, if we talk about it out of context, it's questionable," Keith Jennings, Iraq combat veteran and clinical psychologist, says. He acts as chief science adviser for a North Carolina-based group called StopSoldierSuicide.org.
There is a problem with the name itself. Stop "Soldier" Suicide, used in context, would mean that they are trying to stop soldiers from committing suicide, not all of the services, and certainly not talking about veterans.
At the time NPR produced this article, the DOD report shows clearly that the following statement is also wrong.
So Smolenski and a team, in a study released this year, dug deeper. They found that vets who had served during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars commit suicide at a rate of about one a day — not 22.
The average of suicides within the military has been 500 a year since 2012. (Add in Active Components with Reserve totals.) Is that what the "team" looked at?
It would make sense however, aside from that, had they really "dug deeper" they would have discovered how many were not included in any of the reports from the DOD or the VA.
If you read Wounded Times, you have seen all the data and links. It is up to them to go and find them, but much like years ago, I offered to help them change the outcome, they were not interested in facts.
22Kill has been studied since they started. "In 2012, the Veterans’ Administration (VA) released a Suicide Data Report that found an average of 22 veterans die by suicide everyday. The 22KILL initiative started in 2013, at first just as a social media movement to raise awareness, and later became an official 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in July of 2015." But had they spent enough time to even read the report? If they had, they would have noticed the number was an average from limited data collected from just 21 states. They would have seen that the majority of veterans in the report, were over the age of 50.
Had they invested time and energy to discover what had been done before the topic struck them?
While the conclusion is, much like this from Task and Purpose,"Likewise, awareness doesn’t do much. You can know a problem exists. That doesn’t mean you are any closer to solving the problem. There are a lot of diseases and societal issues with different color ribbons and special days for awareness, but not a lot of solutions. Veterans dying by suicide has been all over the news since the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal broke in April 2014."
Wounded Times has been covering veteran suicides since 2007, right after it started...and lost money every year since the work of changing the outcome matters a hell of a lot more than anything else. Before the move from Florida to New Hampshire, average page views were over 1,000 a day. Right now, after trying to rebuild from a two month break, it is about 600 a day.
As you can see, over 4 million since August of 2007.
Stop Soldier Suicides says, since they started they served 1,000+ has managed to take in over $3 million in 2018, but they are hardly the largest group.
So where exactly is your money going? Find something that will actually make a difference, like taking the time to know about the topic before you share the stunt. Make sure that what you read, is actually the truth, instead of words that stick in your brain. Until we start using words that change the outcome, we will keep contributing to it.
If you have a group that has been raising awareness, it is time to change the subject and earn the money by helping them stay alive!
