A powerful and difficult read about veterans.

[Jeff Murdoch]

I didn't see this linked, so forgive me if I missed it.

The way we treat veterans sometimes just verges on criminal.

[link:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/us/marine-battalion-veterans-scarred-by-suicides-turn-to-one-another-for-help.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region%C2%AEion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0|

[DustyJoe]

1. Common thread to the suicides

Veterans Affairs created a number of programs to fight the problem. Despite spending hundreds of millions on research, the department and the military still know little about how combat experience affects suicide risk, according to suicide researchers focused on the military.

Many recent studies have focused on whether deployment was a risk factor for suicide, and found that it was not.

A common thread in the article to the suicide triggers seems to be a breakup of relationships
ie

according to his longtime girlfriend, Jenna Passio. Instead, she said, he drank and became reclusive. She eventually left him, taking their daughter.
After their breakup, he posted to Facebook, “I’m done with life.” Other Marines texted and called to check on him.
“Disregard guys, everything is fine,” he replied.
A short time later he shot himself in the head

his girlfriend broke up with him and Greenpeace fired him, leaving him alone with wartime memories that he had tried to escape.
He fatally shot himself in October 2014,

One night when he was drunk and despondent over a recent breakup, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

What can the VA do with these examples ?
Institutionalize all combat veterans in a mental health facility on their return till a shrink clears them ?
Not allow any spouse/partner relationships until cleared by a shrink ?
Monitor them closely and lock them up with any substance abuse proof ?
Not allow any access to guns or drugs ?
Require local authorities hold and turn over to the VA for internment any vet arrested ?

The VA has no role in those scenarios if the vet has not looked for any help anywhere. The article is full of 'a vet wrote a facebook post', maybe facebook needs to be held liable for not getting their subscribers mental help.

It remains a problem with the vet and the vets family/close circle of friends. If there was a vehicle for these close friends/family to call the VA to come pick up these guys for involuntary commitment to the closest VA mental health facility till a shrink clears them, then maybe some suicides could be prevented. But, like in a few cases where cops were called because of a suicidal vet, this has ended badly with the vet getting blown away by the cops.

Military lockups coming off a combat area is probably the only way to force a vet to get mental help to prevent access to booze, drugs, women, guns etc. Hardly a viable alternative.

[brer cat]

2. That is a very difficult read, Jeff.

“Something happens over there,” said Mr. Havniear, whose best friend from the battalion tried suicide by cutting his wrists after returning home, but survived. “You wake up a primal part of your brain you are not supposed to listen to, and it becomes a part of you. I shot an old woman. I shot her on purpose because she was running at us with an RPG. You see someone blown in half, or you carry a foot. You can try, but it is hard to get away from that.”

I don't know how anyone could be equipped psychologically to deal with that, but most of these men were teenagers or early twenties when they deployed, and would have limited coping skills to deal with the stress and inhumanity of war. Imo, the "criminal" act begins when they are deployed not just when they return. Unfortunately the people who have the power to send in the troops are not required to consider just what that will entail or plan with how to deal with the aftermath.