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Help and Resources: Veteran Suicide    [
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    The Veteran Suicide Epidemic
    CBS News

    Tuesday 13 November 2007

    New York - They are the casualties of wars you don't often hear about - soldiers who die of self-inflicted wounds. Little is known about the true scope of suicides among those who have served in the military.

    But a five-month CBS News investigation discovered data that shows a startling rate of suicide, what some call a hidden epidemic, Chief Investigative Reporter Armen Keteyian reports exclusively.

    "I just felt like this silent scream inside of me," said Jessica Harrell, the sister of a soldier who took his own life.

    "I opened up the door and there he was," recalled Mike Bowman, the father of an Army reservist.

    "I saw the hose double looped around his neck," said Kevin Lucey, another military father.

    "He was gone," said Mia Sagahon, whose soldier boyfriend committed suicide.

    Keteyian spoke with the families of five former soldiers who each served in Iraq - only to die battling an enemy they could not conquer. Their loved ones are now speaking out in their names.

    They survived the hell that's Iraq and then they come home only to lose their life.

    Twenty-three-year-old Marine Reservist Jeff Lucey hanged himself with a garden hose in the cellar of this parents' home - where his father, Kevin, found him.

    "There's a crisis going on and people are just turning the other way," Kevin Lucey said.

    Kim and Mike Bowman's son Tim was an Army reservist who patrolled one of the most dangerous places in Baghdad, known as Airport Road.

    "His eyes when he came back were just dead. The light wasn't there anymore," Kim Bowman said.

    Eight months later, on Thanksgiving Day, Tim shot himself. He was 23.

    Diana Henderson's son, Derek, served three tours of duty in Iraq. He died jumping off a bridge at 27.

    "Going to that morgue and seeing my baby ... my life will never be the same," she said.

    Beyond the individual loss, it turns out little information exists about how widespread suicides are among these who have served in the military. There have been some studies, but no one has ever counted the numbers nationwide.

    "Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total," Bowman said.

    Why do the families think that is?

    "Because they don't want the true numbers of casualties to really be known," Lucey said.

    Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is a member of the Veterans Affairs Committee.

    "If you're just looking at the overall number of veterans themselves who've committed suicide, we have not been able to get the numbers," Murray said.

    CBS News' investigative unit wanted the numbers, so it submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense asking for the numbers of suicides among all service members for the past 12 years.

    Four months later, they sent CBS News a document, showing that between 1995 and 2007, there were almost 2,200 suicides. That's 188 last year alone. But these numbers included only "active duty" soldiers.

    CBS News went to the Department of Veterans Affairs, where Dr. Ira Katz is head of mental health.

    "There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem," he said.

    Why hasn't the VA done a national study seeking national data on how many veterans have committed suicide in this country?

    "That research is ongoing," he said.

    So CBS News did an investigation - asking all 50 states for their suicide data, based on death records, for veterans and non-veterans, dating back to 1995. Forty-five states sent what turned out to be a mountain of information.

    And what it revealed was stunning.

    In 2005, for example, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That's 120 each and every week, in just one year.

    Dr. Steve Rathburn is the acting head of the biostatistics department at the University of Georgia. CBS News asked him to run a detailed analysis of the raw numbers that we obtained from state authorities for 2004 and 2005.

    It found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets. (Veterans committed suicide at the rate of between 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.)

    One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)

    "Wow! Those are devastating," said Paul Sullivan, a former VA analyst who is now an advocate for veterans rights from the group Veterans For Common Sense.

    "Those numbers clearly show an epidemic of mental health problems," he said.

    "We are determined to decrease veteran suicides," Dr. Katz said.

    "One hundred and twenty a week. Is that a problem?" Keteyian asked.

    "You bet it's a problem," he said.

    Is it an epidemic?

    "Suicide in America is an epidemic, and that includes veterans," Katz said.

    Sen. Murray said the numbers CBS News uncovered are significant: "These statistics tell me we've really failed people that served our country."

    Do these numbers serve as a wake-up call for this country?

    "If these numbers don't wake up this country, nothing will," she said. "We each have a responsibility to the men and women who serve us aren't lost when they come home."

    An update: Another member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, responded to the CBS News story Tuesday.

    "The report that the rate of suicide among veterans is double that of the general population is deeply troubling and simply unacceptable. I am especially concerned that so many young veterans appear to be taking their own lives. For too many veterans, returning home from battle does not bring an end to conflict. There is no question that action is needed."

 

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    Go to Original

    Help and Resources: Veteran Suicide
    By Laura Strickler
    CBS News

    Tuesday 13 November 2007

FYI: warning signs and where those at risk can get help.

    Today, CBS News reported the findings of a five-month investigation into veteran suicides.

    The results were startling: according to data from 45 states, 6,256 men and women who had served in the armed forces took their own lives in 2005 - that's 120 suicides every week. Chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian and his investigative team found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide that year than non-veterans.

    During the course of the investigation, the investigative team compiled a list of resources for how to find help and recognize the warning signs of mental health issues that could also be warning signs for suicide.

    How to Spot Warning Signs

    The Department of Veterans Affairs provides the following warning signs.

• Talking about wanting to hurt or kill oneself
  
  
• Trying to get pills, guns, or other ways to harm oneself
  
  
• Talking or writing about death, dying, or suicide
  
  
• Hopelessness
  
  
• Rage, uncontrolled anger, seeking revenge
  
  
• Acting in a reckless or risky way
  
  
• Feeling trapped, like there's no way out
  
  
• Saying or feeling there's no reason for living
  
  
• For more on mental health services at the Dept of Veterans Affairs, click here or call the VA's suicide hotline at 800.273.TALK (8255).

    Suicide Signs Unique to Veterans

    Experts on suicide prevention say for veterans there are some particular signs to watch for.

• Calling old friends, particularly military friends, to say goodbye
  
  
• Cleaning a weapon that they may have as a souvenir
  
  
• Visits to graveyards
  
  
• Obsessed with news coverage of the war, the military channel
  
  
• Wearing their uniform or part of their uniform, boots, etc
  
  
• Talking about how honorable it is to be a soldier
  
  
• Sleeping more (sometimes the decision to commit suicide brings a sense of peace of mind, and they sleep more to withdraw)
  
  
• Becoming overprotective of children
  
  
• Standing guard of the house, perhaps while everyone is asleep staying up to "watch over" the house, obsessively locking doors, windows
  
  
• If they are on medication, stopping medication and/or hording medication
  
  
• Hording alcohol - not necessarily hard alcohol, could be wine
  
  
• Spending spree, buying gifts for family members and friends "to remember by"
  
  
• Defensive speech "you wouldn't understand," etc.
  
  
• Stop making eye contact or speaking with others

    Where to Get Help

    Hotline for Veterans: Veterans who need help immediate counseling should call the hotline run by Veterans Affairs professionals at 1-800-273-TALK and press 1 identifying themselves as military veterans. Staff members are specially trained to take calls from military veterans and its staffed 24 hours a day, everyday. While all operators are trained to help veterans, some are also former military.

    Clinical Care: To find the closest Dept of Veterans Affairs facility to you that has mental health professionals, go to this Web site and type in your zip code.

    Veterans Affairs Health Benefits

    Read more about what benefits are available to veterans.

    To find out more about what kind of services returning service members qualify for, check out this summary at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

    Related Links

    Air Force Suicide Prevention Program

    Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine
    410.671.4656

    Navy Environmental Health Center's Suicide Prevention site
    757.953.0959

    Marine Corps Suicide Prevention Program

    National Center for PTSD
    802.296.6300

    Nonprofit group Give An Hour

    SAMHSA's National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
    800.273.8255
    TTY: 800.799.4889

    Recent Legislation to Prevent Veteran Suicide: On November 6, 2007, President Bush signed into law the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act. It's named after a soldier who committed suicide in Grundy County, Iowa, in December 2005, after serving an 11-month tour in Iraq. The bill requires the Department of Veteran's Affairs to meet deadlines in providing the following services:

• Train VA staff on suicide prevention and mental health care
  
  
• Staff each VA medical facility with a suicide prevention counselor
  
  
• Screen soldiers who seek care through the VA for mental health needs
  
  
• Support outreach and education for veterans and their families
  
  
• Research the most effective strategies for suicide prevention
  
  
• Create a peer support counseling program so veterans can help other veterans

    However, while the bill requires the VA to provide these services, it provides no new funding.

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    Sarah Fitzpatrick in Washington contributed to this story.

 

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    Mental Problems Appear Months After Return
    By William H. McMichael
    Army Times

    Tuesday 13 November 2007

    A new Army study finds that soldiers returning from the Iraq war are more likely to report mental health problems several months later rather than immediately following their return - and reserve component troops are twice as likely to report such problems with the passage of time.

    On average, one in five active-duty soldiers and more than two in five reservists who served in Iraq, and were included in the study, required referral for mental health treatment, researchers said.

    The study, the combined result of initial and follow-on post-deployment screenings of 88,235 active and reserve soldiers who filled out questionnaires between June 2005 and December 2006, validates a decision made two years ago to institute a follow-on mental health screening three to six months after returning home from the war, Army researchers said. It was the first-ever study of troops who had completed both screenings.

    Marine Corps records were excluded, because while Marines also filled out the surveys, the follow-on questionnaire had not been widely distributed to Marine Corps units during the study period, so the results "may not be representative," researchers said.

    The Army team's findings are being published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Col. (Dr.) Charles Milliken, an Army psychiatrist and principal investigator for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Division of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, called the effort "part of the Army's continuing efforts to better understand the human dimension of war, the physical and the psychological impact of combat on our soldiers."

    The Army is doing the assessments, a combination of answers to survey questions and follow-ups by clinicians, in order to "reach out" to soldiers stressed by their deployments "and get them the care that they need," Milliken said.

    "This is all about reducing stigma, and breaking down the barriers to getting care," he said.

    The work was submitted to JAMA, Milliken said, "not only to be transparent, but to involve the entire medical community in our efforts."

    The previous study, published in JAMA in March 2006, reported preliminary findings that troops were more likely to report mental health problems months after returning from Afghanistan and Iraq rather than immediately after getting home, making it likely that some problems were being missed. As a result of those findings, the Defense Department instituted the follow-on screening, which this time included only Iraq war veterans.

    In the new initial screenings, the numbers for active and reserve troops "look almost identical" and came in with an average of 4 percent needing referrals for treatment, Milliken said. Several months later, researchers found the need for referrals for both physical and mental problems rose significantly.

    From the first to the follow-on screening, the most significant increase in problems reported by returning troops was in interpersonal conflict (active-duty troops, to 14 percent from 4 percent; reserves, to 21.1 percent from 4.2 percent).

    Other problem areas also showed increases: post-traumatic stress disorder (active troops, to 16.7 percent from 11.8 percent; reserves, to 24.5 percent from 12.7 percent); depression (active troops, to 10.3 percent from 4.7 percent; reserves, to 13 percent from 3.8 percent); and overall mental health risk (active troops, to 27.1 percent from 17 percent; reserves, to 35.5 percent from 17.5 percent).

    "When you come back ... you're feeling great," said Brig. Gen. Stephen Jones, the U.S. Army Medical Command's assistant surgeon general. "You're almost euphoric. And you don't have any problems in the world. You're just glad to be home. And then over the next three to four weeks, you get home, you re-establish the relationships with your family, and the normal stress that everybody feels when they return home starts to surface."

    Jones called it a "normal, adaptive response we see with everybody. And so we would expect to see the stress levels at home go up. It's one reason that we sought to have the second survey, so we could identify those folks and provide them with treatment."

    The Army doctors said they couldn't state conclusively why reservists report a higher rate of problems; Milliken noted the similar and relatively low rates of problems reported by both components on the initial post-deployment assessment, and said in-theater Mental Health Advisory Team studies produce similar results.

    "We don't think it's about the war exposures, or a basic resiliency difference," Milliken said. "It may be a difference in just the health coverage situation they've got."

    When they return three to six months later for the follow-on screening, many reserve troops have uncertainty about whether they qualify for government health care due to war-related problems. Milliken said that at the time of the second screening, half of them are already beyond the period in which they qualify for transitional health care under Tricare, "so the whole issue of medical coverage is already on their mind."

    That benefit, the Transitional Assistance Management Program, provides Tricare coverage for 180 days after separation from active duty for Guard and reserve members who are called up in support of a contingency operation for more than 30 days. Their family members also qualify for the transitional coverage.

    At the same time, Milliken said, a Department of Veterans Affairs representative at the armory is explaining that Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans can get up to two years of VA treatment without having to prove a service-connected disability, and that if they develop a problem beyond that window, it is valuable to have it documented.

    In contrast, active troops who have returned "know they can walk into sick call any time and get care," Jones said.

    Of the 88,235 soldiers who had completed both forms from the same deployment, 56,350 were active-duty troops. All told, 90.8 percent were men; 58.2 percent were married; and the mean age was 30.4 years.