Deadline Day: Becca Trabin Takes Over
Yay! TTWS has an intern, Becca. We love her. Here’s her first post:
The Associated Press recently reported that over 22,000 veterans have called a new VA suicide hotline within its first year of operation.
According to the VA’s own estimates, an average of 18 veterans commit suicide every day, a fifth of whom are under the care of the VA.
The young ones (age 20-24) returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are the most at-risk, being two to four times as likely as civilians to commit suicide. A CBS report asked whether or not the number of suicides each year warrants the use of the “E” word—
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.
6,500 preventable deaths per year among a population that’s supposed to be receiving proper treatment for PTSD from the government, but isn’t, and that doesn’t qualify as an epidemic?
Then there’s at least an epidemic of spokespeople from one American bureaucracy after another who tell outright lies about the failings of their institutions. It takes a representative from a group with the phrase “common sense” in its name to interpret these figures rationally–
“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.
Over 4,100 troops have died fighting in the Iraq War—if tens of thousands of troops make it home alive only to lose the will to live, the Department of Veterans Affairs at least owes them the decency of acknowledging the severity of the problem.
liz | 12:54 PM | Uncategorized
Hi Becca! You are learning from the best there is. Liz has taught me so much too!
Welcome, Becca. Good work.
“6,500 preventable deaths per year among a population that’s supposed to be receiving proper treatment for PTSD from the government, but isn’t,”
My feeling, after living with PTSD for most of my 60 years, is that there’s very little in the way of effective treatment, especially for survivors of severe/early/sadistic/multiple (choose one or all of the above) trauma. So it’s not surprising to me that the VA’s treatment isn’t working. Sometimes you simply can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. The sooner we all get real about the fact that a lot of young people are going to return from war with an intractable, trauma-induced mental illness the sooner we can begin to *realistically* count the costs of war. Thus far we’ve moved from denial of its existance to wishful thinking about its amenability to treatment. I suppose that’s progress of a sort.
Good story, Becca.
Where the VA denies there is an epidemic of suicides can it be affording our veterans the very mental health care we would expect or is it merely representing the same?
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