18 Suicides a Day

This excerpt from today's edition of the KC Star made me sad.. and I was already sad this morning..
Each day, 18 veterans kill themselves, according to the latest estimate from the Department of Veterans Affairs. No firm numbers are available, such as breakdowns of veterans’ suicides by the decade in which they served. There’s no unified nationwide system to track veterans’ deaths.

But 18 suicides each day translate to more than 6,500 deaths a year — and 21 percent of all U.S. suicides. Veterans make up about 8 percent of the U.S. population.
I don't think that I have much to add except to say that PTSD is under-diagnosed and largely ignored by the military and most of our country.

5 comments:

  1. That is sad. I wish we would take better care of our veterans. It bugs me to see so many get poor care when they gave so much. Seems the very least we could do.

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  2. Sad and shameful that we don't do a better job of taking care of our vets.

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  3. My cousin is one of those statistics, he was a Viet Nam Vet.

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  4. Yeap - very sad indeed, our youth seeing things and doing things that robs them of their innocence.

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  5. I don't know how we expect these men to see things men should not have to see and come back unaffected. We need to do a better proactive job of identifying those who are struggling.

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