Why suicide rate among veterans may be more than 22 a day

[morningfog]

Every day, 22 veterans take their own lives. That's a suicide every 65 minutes. As shocking as the number is, it may actually be higher.

The figure, released by the Department of Veterans Affairs in February, is based on the agency's own data and numbers reported by 21 states from 1999 through 2011. Those states represent about 40% of the U.S. population. The other states, including the two largest (California and Texas) and the fifth-largest (Illinois), did not make data available.

Who wasn't counted?

People like Levi Derby, who hanged himself in his grandfather's garage in Illinois on April 5, 2007. He was haunted, says his mother, Judy Caspar, by an Afghan child's death. He had handed the girl a bottle of water, and when she came forward to take it, she stepped on a land mine.

When Derby returned home, he locked himself in a motel room for days. Caspar saw a vacant stare in her son's eyes. A while later, Derby was called up for a tour of Iraq. He didn't want to kill again. He went AWOL and finally agreed to a dishonorable discharge.

Derby was not in the VA system, and Illinois did not send in data on veteran suicides to the VA.

Experts have no doubt that people are being missed in the national counting of veteran suicides. Luana Ritch, the veterans and military families coordinator in Nevada, helped publish an extensive report on that state's veteran suicides.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/21/us/22-veteran-suicides-a-day/index.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. Recommended.

So sad, I've posted at least twice a year what had been a rate of 18 successful suicides PER DAY, a shocking number.

22 per day, and possibly more?

[Downwinder]

3. I am sure there are more. I don't think they include

single vehicle accidents in those figures. There are bound to be some written off to alcohol that should be included.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Also not included: drinking self to death, other self destructive behaviors.

The one friend I had who went to the first gulf war came home, got into doing crank, ate his gun.

RIP, Mike aka Studly.

[WillyT]

2. A Very Sad K & R !!!

[Downwinder]

5. I have never seen the figures, but I have

been told that more died by suicide after returning from Vietnam than died in action there.

[hopemountain]

6. all the more reason,

if you have loved ones who are vets of iraq and afghanistan (i have several nieces and nephews), to make a good connection with them as you are able and support them through the dark times if you can. if you cannot, connect them to someone who can.
one of my nephews was given 23 different medications for "coping" with ptsd and an ied brain injury. wtf??? 23 different meds?

[Scuba]

7. America's treatment of veterans is a national shame.