Or, if your browser allows, use the embedded
player below.
(If video is not available, it is still processing at
YouTube...please try again in a few minutes.)
Armen Keteyian: Analysis Reveals What Some Are
Calling "Hidden Epidemic"
(CBS) Some of America's 25 million veterans face their biggest fight when
they return home from the battlefield -- when they take on mental illness.
And, a CBS News analysis reveals they lose that battle, and take their own
lives, at a clip described by various experts as "stunning" and
"alarming," according to Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian.
One called it a "hidden epidemic."
He says no one had ever counted just how many suicides there are
nationwide among those who had served in the military -- until now.
The five-month CBS News probe, based upon a detailed analysis of data
obtained from death records from 2004 and 2005, found that veterans were
more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 as non-vets.
A recent Veteran Affairs Department estimate says some 5,000 ex-servicemen
and women will commit suicide this year, largely as a result of mental
health issues, and Keteyian says, "Our numbers are much higher than that,
overall."
He says the numbers in the CBS News study shocked everyone from Sen. Patty
Murray (D, Wash.) to veterans' rights advocate Paul Sullivan.
Murray told Keteyian, "That's a lot of young men and women who've gone to
fight for us, and come home and found themselves that lost."
Said Sullivan, "This is pulling the fire alarm to say our veterans need
help now."
Staff Sgt. Justin Reyes spent a violent year serving in Iraq.
"The war didn't end foe him when he came home," says his mother, Jean
Willis. "I think he was being tormented and tortured by his experiences."
Medical records show Reyes suffered severe psychological trauma after
witnessing "multiple dead" and having to "sort through badly mutilated
bodies," Keteyian reports. Earlier this year, a month after separating
from the Army, Reyes hanged himself with a cord in his apartment. He was
26.
Willis and members of four other families recently sat down together to
talk to Keteyian about losing loved ones, all veterans of Iraq, to
suicide.
"Was their any sense that they were having problems at all?" Keteyian
asked.
"I said, 'What's the matter, Tim?' " Kim Bowman replied. "I said, 'Don't
you want to come home?' And he said, 'I'm not sure.' He said,
'Everything's changed.' "
Crying, Bowman added, "He said, 'I'm not the same person anymore."
Mia Sagahon's boyfriend, Walter, shot himself at 27, about a
year-and-a-half after coming back from Iraq.
A weeping Sagahon remarked, "I just didn't realize -- that it could... I
didn't think he was thinking about killing himself. Otherwise, I would
have taken him wherever he needed to go."
Joyce Lucey observed, "I think that's what families are left with -- the
guilt about what could have been done, and what we should have done."
"Guilt and anger," Mike Bowman said.
-------------------------
Larry Scott --
Don't forget to read all of today's VA
News Flashes (click here)
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which
has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are
making such materials available in an effort to advance understanding of
veterans' issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this
site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest
in receiving the included information for educational purposes. For more
information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish
to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that
go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
