Archives » Thursday, December 13, 2007
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David Botti
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Dec 13, 2007 11:52 AM
A quick post here to let you know retired Lt. Gen. James Peake was unanimously approved by the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee for becoming VA Secretary. His nomination will now go on to a full vote in the Senate, and he is expected to be confirmed.
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David Botti
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Dec 13, 2007 11:17 AM
A few months ago we learned the suicide rate among U.S. veterans hit a
26-year high in 2006. Tuesday, we learned what this can mean for an
individual family and how congress is reacting to the problem. The
House Veterans' Affairs Committee sought to understand the scope of veteran suicide rates, why the Veterans Administration hasn't done more, and what can be done to fix things in the future. From Newsday:
On Oct. 31, it was reported preliminary research
from the VA had found that from the start of the war in Afghanistan,
Oct. 7, 2001, to the end of 2005, 283 troops who served and had been
discharged from the military had committed suicide. In a report last
May, the VA inspector general said VA officials estimate 1,000 suicides
per year among veterans receiving care from the agency and as many as
5,000 a year among all veterans.
Here
are perhaps the most shocking numbers: 18 veterans per-day, and more
than 120 per-week, commit suicide in the United States. Of all those
testifying Tuesday, none was more moving and illustrative to what this
epidemic does, than Mike and Kim Bowman. Their son, an Army National
Guard soldier, killed himself last Thanksgiving. From their testimony:
Every
one of those at risk veterans also has a family that will suffer if
that soldier finds the only way to take the battlefield pain away is by
taking his or her own life. Their ravished and broken spirits are then
passed on to their families as they try to justify what has happened.
I now suffer from the same mental illnesses that claimed my son’s life,
PTSD, from the images and sounds of finding him and hearing his life
fade away, and depression from a loss that I would not wish on anyone.
At the hearing, Ilona Meagher, author of a book on returning veterans with PTSD, asked why the VA didn't learn lessons from the Vietnam War.
We have had a “see no
evil, hear no evil” approach to examining post-deployment psychological
reintegration issues such as suicide. After all we have learned from
the struggles of the Vietnam War generation – and the ensuing
controversy over how many of its veterans did or did not commit suicide
in its wake – why is there today no known national registry where
Afghanistan and Iraq veteran suicide data is being collected? How can
we ascertain reintegration problems – if any exist – if we are not
proactive in seeking them out?
Meagher also presented to Congress an extensive timeline of veterans' suicides she's compiled. Excerpts:
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