Veteran Suicide

On this 244th anniversary of The Marine Corp and a day before Veterans day I'd like to take a moment of your time to discuss a very serious matter; Veteran suicides.

It has been suggested that every 85 minutes or roughly 22 times a day a veteran commits suicide. This year it hit me hard. I have had three people that I know attempt suicide with one, my dearest brother in arms, succeeding.

It is about him that I am going to speak. I will not use his name because I haven't asked his family for permission but I will simply give him a letter “J”.

He was a combat vet and I was his platoon Sgt. We met in Iraq early in the war and spent a lot of time eating some of the same sand and trying hard to avoid “lead poisoning.” We experienced much of what many before us had endured in war and as a result we became closer then family from our experiences.

He later went on to become a state trooper, worked for the IRS, and eventually joined NCIS. At the same time he married his beautiful wife and had two children, all of this while earning his masters degree.

On the surface everything looked great but the inner demons from war and some of his other experiences were eating at him.

Both his wife and children noticed that he wasn't as happy as he used to be and that the pressures of his job were really starting to tell on him. She tried to get him to go to counseling but he wouldn't go. She reached out to me to talk to him, and I did, even telling him of my own battles with PTSD and the fact that I went to counseling for it, but he still refused to go, and do you know why?

He was afraid that he would loose his badge and gun, along with his pension, if he admitted to having PTSD, and where did that thinking come from? The very government that sent him off to war and had him working horrible cases for NCIS. They have, and still do, see it as a weakness to admit that you have a problem.

In the end he did loose it all. The inner demons of hell tormented him to the point of suicide and tossed him over the edge.

He was not homeless, he wasn't on drugs, by all accounts his life was moving right along, and he was doing well, but he did suffer from PTSD, something that could have been treated, if he had been allowed to do so with out fear of losing it all.

While he was ultimately responsible for ending his own life. I don't blame him. I blame those in the government who would send us all off to hell to fight and then essentially dismiss or even mock us upon our return or a few years down the road when the symptoms start.

I blame congress for speaking about mental health issues and yet still doing nothing to address it and all the government agencies that put people in harms way and then ignores mental health issues related to it.

I even blame myself for not being able to reach him, but at least I tried, which is more then I can say about the powers that be.

I don't know what the best solution is other then to not go to war in the first place but I do have A solution. Give veterans,especially war veterans , more then just words. Many do have various addictions, many are poor and are living on the streets and many more are just able to get by on much less then a living wage, based on their injuries and illnesses as set by the VA, but most importantly they need a community that will reach out to them and help them readjust to life rather then shunning them.

PTSD is real and it effects many veterans in various ways, so instead of just a thank you, though greatly appreciated, really check on them to make sure that they are receiving all the help that they need then perhaps we can lower the number of vet suicides to zero.