By Marco Margaritoff Published November 11,
2019 Updated February 12, 2020 By Marco Margaritoff Published November 11, 2019
Updated February 12, 2020
Since 2008, more
than 60,000 U.S. veterans have taken their own lives, with more than half of
those deaths via firearms.
In 2017. 6,139 veterans killed themselves that year.
When soldiers return home from war, they may
feel that the worst is over. They made it back alive and are now free from the
fear of dying in combat.
The reality, however, is much more complicated
and alarming: More U.S. veterans have committed suicide between 2008 and 2017
than the number of U.S. soldiers that died during the entire Vietnam War. According to the defense news site Military.com, the
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) shared these alarming rates in a
September 2019 report.
The U.S. suffered around 58,000 fatalities over the course of the Vietnam War, which
lasted from 1955 to 1975. This number has now been eclipsed by the more than
60,000 U.S. veteran suicides in a recent span of just 10 years.
More than 6,000 veterans committed suicide
every year during that timeframe, despite the fact that the total number of
veterans declined by 18 percent.
This statistic serves as a stark reminder that
soldiers need mental health treatment just as much as medical care for their
physical injuries.
A 2017 FOX Business segment on the
increasing rates of suicide among veterans.
The VA’s 2019 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report also
revealed that more than half of these veterans committed suicide via firearm.
Female veterans used guns 43.2 percent of the time, while male veterans did so
70.7 percent of the time.
The rate of veteran suicide continues to
increase with each and every passing year. In the worst year on record, 6,139
veterans killed themselves in 2017. This marks an increase of two percent from
the previous year — and a total increase of six percent since 2008.
Shockingly, almost 70 percent of veterans who
killed themselves did not receive healthcare services from the VA in the
lead-up to their suicides.
The report also found an unnerving number of
suicides among former National Guard and Reserve members. These veterans were
never “activated,” as the military describes it, and thus have no access to VA
services. Within this group, there were 919 suicides in 2017 — a rate of 2.5
suicides per day. In total, around 12.4 percent of all military suicides in
2017 came from this group.
2017 was also the first year that the suicide
rate for veterans reached 1.5 times the rate for non-veteran adults in the U.S.
CBS Evening News on the veteran suicides on VA properties.
While the VA’s report didn’t account for how
effective its mental health programs have been, veterans are clearly in need of
better care.
The VA statement
accompanying their report underlined just how complex of an epidemic
this really is. Officials in charge explained that the department is simply
incapable of addressing the issue and that it needs help from the private
sector to properly tackle it.
“We cannot do this alone,” said Dr. Richard
Stone, the Executive in Charge of the Veterans Health Administration. “We call
on our community partners to join us in this effort.”
“VA is working to prevent suicide among all
veterans, whether they are enrolled in VA health care or not,” said VA
Secretary Robert Wilkie.
“That’s why the department has adopted a
comprehensive public health approach to suicide prevention, using bundled
strategies that cut across various sectors — faith communities, employers,
schools and health care organizations, for example — to reach veterans where
they live and thrive.”
A CNN segment probing the inefficiency
of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
However, the Government Accountability Office
reported in December 2018 that the VA left almost $5 million of its suicide
prevention outreach budget unused. Social media posts, public service
announcements, billboards, and advertisements all declined in 2017 and 2018 —
though this trend began to increase in 2019.
Psychologist and leader of the National Center
for Veterans Studies, Craig Bryan, explained that organizing thorough study of
veteran suicide statistics could make budget allocations to tackle the issue
more effective.
“The benefit of separating out subgroups is
that it can help us identify higher-risk subgroups of the whole, which may be
able to help us determine where and how to best focus resources,” he said.
According to the Federal Register, President Trump signed an
Executive Order in March 2019 to do just that.
Order 13861, or the “President’s Roadmap to
Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide” (PREVENTS) created a
task force led by Wilkie to help consolidate federal funds and make suicide
prevention more effective. The task force will offer research grants to state
and local governments as well as collaborate with the private sector to address
this issue.
“Veteran suicide requires an all-hands on-deck
approach to preserve the lives of our Veterans who have served our country,”
said Wilkie. “This is a call to action.”
\https://allthatsinteresting.com/veteran-suicide
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