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HAUNTED BY WAR, UNWILLING TO SEEK HELP -- Despite

relatives' pleas, Marine vet David Fickel didn't get

counseling. On Memorial Day, he killed himself.

 

David Fickel

 

Story here... http://www.startribune.com/
462/story/1009489.html

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Haunted by war, unwilling to seek help

Despite relatives' pleas, Marine vet David Fickel didn't get counseling. On Memorial Day, he killed himself. A former Marine who took his life last Memorial Day had not sought help for his anxiety and depression, a situation all too common among veterans.

By David Shaffer, Star Tribune

 

LITCHFIELD, MINN. - David Fickel decided at the last minute not to march in the town's Memorial Day parade last year.

He stayed in his hot, two-room apartment, intoxicated and upset. Then Fickel, a Marine Corps veteran who had served in the Persian Gulf, turned a shotgun on himself.

Two and a half years after his honorable discharge, Fickel, 25, had gone from a fun-loving optimist to an anxious, angry man who'd stopped caring about almost everything, said friends and relatives. Family members worried that his war experiences haunted him and urged him to get help.

"We tried," said his stepfather, Mitch Aanden. "He said, 'No, I'm tough. I am a Marine.'"

Fickel is one of 13 active-duty or discharged servicemen under age 30 who committed suicide in Minnesota between Jan. 1, 2003, and last October, according to death records. Most had not seen combat, but interviews with relatives of 10 young veterans who killed themselves revealed one similarity with Fickel: None apparently sought mental health counseling.

Suicide, even by a war veteran, usually is too sensitive a subject to get wide public notice, but that changed after Jonathan Schulze, a Marine veteran who had fought in Iraq, took his life in New Prague on Jan. 16. His family has maintained that the St. Cloud VA Medical Center twice turned him away when he talked of suicide.

Veterans Affairs officials won't comment, citing privacy concerns. But as federal officials investigate what happened, Schulze's death is raising new concerns about the needs of 1.4 million servicemen and women whose duties in Iraq and Afghanistan can involve intense combat, exposure to seemingly random bomb attacks and other traumatic events. Recent research found that nearly one in six recent combat veterans reported experiencing depression, general anxiety or post-traumatic stress, which has been linked to increased suicide risk.

The dilemma, experts say, is that many suicide victims, like Fickel, don't try to seek treatment for their mental health problems. The perceived stigma of psychiatric care is a particular problem in the military. Surveys show that six of 10 servicemen who need mental health counseling don't seek it, fearing it will hurt their careers.

To boot camp, and the world

None of this crossed the mind of Robin Aanden when her son David Fickel walked out the door in December 1999 and hopped into a Marine recruiter's car to begin a journey that would cross two oceans.

She hugged his tall, thin frame. "Everybody just fell apart," she said.

Fickel was a level-headed, caring kid, his mother said. He moved to Litchfield, a prairie town of 6,500 about an hour west of the Twin Cities, in 1996, after his parents divorced and his mother remarried. He made people laugh and loved to play baseball and golf, friends and family members said.

Grady Huggett, his best friend, often drove him to Burger King for lunch because Fickel never got a drivers license. "He would buy a Whopper Jr. for me, and I'd drive and pay the gas," Huggett said.

Fickel graduated from Litchfield High School in 1999. He was an average student who liked history and hoped someday to teach school, relatives said. His interest in the Marines surfaced in his junior year, surprising his family.

After boot camp, Fickel transferred to Camp Lejeune, N.C., and became an expert shot. His unit soon headed to Korea and Japan. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, his unit was sent to Afghanistan. Later he served in the Persian Gulf.

He often called home, but his family saw little of him and understood him less.

The stresses of war

Studies show that soldiers have a higher suicide risk than civilians. In Iraq and Kuwait, 22 U.S. soldiers killed themselves in 2005, nearly double the national rate, an Army study found.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, caused by traumatic events that trigger anxiety, depression or other symptoms, is nearly four times as common in veterans of Army or Marine ground units in Iraq and Afghanistan than in servicemen in other units, according to a 2005 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

People who commit suicide often have major depression, difficulties with relationships or alcohol- and drug-abuse problems. "All these things are warning signs, and the more you have, the more likely it is to happen," said Dr. Paula Clayton, retired head of the University of Minnesota psychiatry department and now medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in New York.

Dr. Martha Sajatovic, a psychiatry professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said post-traumatic stress complicates treatment. "If I have a problem already, and I toss another problem on top of that, the burden I have to struggle with is going to be greater," said Sajatovic, who researches veterans and suicide.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says programs are available in many places, and that it is working to improve services. Less than a third of eligible Iraq-Afghanistan veterans rely on the VA for their health care, however. Many, like David Fickel, get civilian jobs that include health benefits.

"Everyone at the VA wants to reach these guys and get them in and support them when they come home," said Dr. Lawrence E. Adler, director of a VA mental health research center in Denver, which this month co-sponsored a conference on veteran suicide.

Dr. Ira Katz, the department's deputy chief for mental health patient care, said the notion that the VA doesn't respond to veterans at risk for suicide is wrong, and sends a dangerous message.

"We are concerned that that message can promote suicide," Katz said.

Back home, and changed

When David Fickel returned to Litchfield after four years of Marine duty, he'd changed.

"He quieted down," said Huggett, his friend from high school.

Fickel seemed anxious that he'd be called back to active duty, said his sister Haley, who once shared a house with him. He spoke vaguely of war, offering hints of sniper duty in Afghanistan. He told Huggett that he had shot people.

Fickel told his sister Caitlin that he served on a military supply ship in the Persian Gulf, and had fired on a small boat that posed a threat. A Marine spokeswoman said the shots were non-lethal warnings.

He no longer talked of becoming a teacher, and took a production job at a Litchfield firm that makes high-tech glass. His relationships with women also didn't work out, relatives said. "He wanted the perfect family life, and he was sick of that not happening," said Haley Fickel.

Early last year, he quit eating properly, lost weight, slept badly and stopped caring about his appearance, his mother said. He drank heavily and got arrested for driving while intoxicated, she said.

"I told him his anger was getting out of control," she added. When she offered to make an appointment for help at a clinic, he wouldn't go, she said.

The day before his death, Fickel talked to his sisters and best friend about killing himself. They said they coaxed him out of his apartment, away from his loaded shotgun, and spent the evening sitting around a bonfire in his sisters' back yard. Afterward, he seemed better, they said.

But he wasn't. The next day brought more rage over a breakup with a girlfriend. His mother and sister Haley went to his apartment, but could not calm him. They were outside the front door when he pulled the trigger in his bedroom. He left no note.

Huggett said he regrets not removing the gun, but doesn't know if that or calling police the day before would have helped. His family has spent months pondering what else they could have done.

The timing of Fickel's suicide -- on Memorial Day -- is a mystery. He had said little of his feelings about the war. Fickel's stepfather, Mitch Aanden, said he doesn't believe the day was chosen to make a statement.

"I don't think he knew what day it was," he said.

Computer-assisted reporting editor Glenn Howatt contributed to this report. David Shaffer • 612-673-7090 • dshaffer@startribune.com

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Larry Scott  --