Take action to really help our veterans
They are the casualties off the battlefield. The Veterans Administration says 18 veterans a day, 6,500 a year, take their own life. A national hotline in Canandaigua has become a place for veterans to turn to for help.
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The National Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center gets 200 calls a day. The calls come from veterans and their family members from across the country.
It’s not just younger veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also older vets from World War II, Korea and the Vietnam Wars.
In the 11 months since the hotline started, counselors have received more than 43,000 calls. Not all the callers are suicidal. Some are depressed and frustrated. Some of their problems are related to their combat experiences. Other veterans are having a hard time coping with what the general population faces.
With the cases of PTSD on the rise (40,000 over the past 5 years), the benefits of this hotline are immeasurable. It’s great to see action being taken to help veterans as opposed to empty rhetoric, which is just callous verbiage cloaked in faux concern.
If you want to help veterans, consider taking action by attending or joining Operation Welcome Home at (585) 234-4694, a local branch of a national group that welcomes veterans returning from war at the airport. I can assure you it makes a difference to our battle-weary vets to see so many Americans grateful for their safe return and their honorable service to our country. It is an emotional experience to attend these events, for soldiers, their families and well wishers. Such greetings help the vets in their reintroduction to civilian life.
I’ve included a few more photos from a recent local Operation Welcome Home event where 55 vets returning from Afghanistan were greeted by nearly 100 people. This may not be as important as funding veterans’ bills, such as Jim Webb’s G.I. bill (hint: John McCain, you don’t get it), but support for veterans needs to be found in all layers, from the initial welcome home all the way through reintroduction to civilian life with access to health care, and that includes mental health care.
Our soldiers served our country at oftentimes great personal cost. We absolutely must now serve them with comprehensive medical care. The costs are too numerous—eighteen lives a day—if we fail to provide proper, actual care for our veterans.
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“The costs are too numerous—eighteen lives a day—if we fail to provide proper, actual care for our veterans.”
I’ve read several articles now about the upward trending numbers of military suicides and it indeed is tragic, all suicides are, but people should keep in mind that according to the latest figures available from the CDC (2005), there were slightly more than 89 suicides a day in the US, 32,637 for the year. Based on the partial data I’ve seen for the years since, that number has risen.
The suicide rate among military personnel, active or retired, is still substantially lower than that of the US population overall. In fact, it’s about equal to the number of women that kill themselves every day in America. Where’s that headline?
Just happened across this post..It really is well written and I thank you for taking the time to stand up for our veterans.
You might also check out my post at http://www.boomersmagic.com - it is similar.
How many of those women cited were veterans? How many of those 89 a day were veterans? Does your source tease that apart? I agree with you that all suicides are tragic but this post is specifically about the personal toll war has upon our soldiers and how we say “Support the troops” and some do not ACT to actually support them.
I’ll keep your comments in mind. Thanks.
The CDC data for 2005 breaks the numbers down by race, gender, and age only, as well as geographic region. I would assume the military figures would be part of the overall total, but saw nothing that states that specifically.