As military and veteran suicides continue to climb, seeking treatment is key to prevention.

NOTE from Larry Scott, VA Watchdog dot Org ... For more about veteran and military suicide ... use our search engine ... here ...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=suicide&op=and

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Military suicide response hinges on erasing stigma against seeking help

By Bruce Alpert, Times-Picayune

http://www.nola.com/military/index.ssf/2010/01
/military_suicide_response_hing.html

The news about suicides in the U.S. military just gets bleaker.

The Defense Department is expected to report today that the Army last year recorded a record number of suicides by active-duty troops. At the end of November, the number stood at 147.

Earlier in the week, the Veterans Affairs Department reported that the suicide rate among 17- to 29-year-old male veterans jumped 26 percent from 2005 to 2007.

On average, 18 veterans per day take their own lives, officials said. And although there are no statistics, Deborah Mullen, the wife of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, said there is anecdotal evidence of a disturbing trend of rising suicide rates among family members of military personnel and veterans.

All this bad news comes despite stepped-up efforts to encourage military members and their families to seek help if they feel overwhelmed, depressed or unsure of whether they want to keep on living.

“Who’s vulnerable? Everyone,” said Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki at a military suicide prevention conference. “Young and old, outgoing and reserved, male, female, officer, enlisted, me included. Warriors suffer emotional wounds just as they suffer physical ones.”

If there’s any good news, he said, it’s that those who seek treatment have fewer suicidal incidents.

Current and former Louisiana military members aren’t immune to the pressures.

The Louisiana National Guard reported 13 suicides among its members between 2003 and 2008, some involving members who had completed multiple battleground assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both.

'Hiding his feelings'

Families of several Louisiana soldiers agree with research that military training that emphasizes toughness and coolness under fire fosters a mentality that soldiers shouldn’t be seeking help for “personal problems,” even when they are back home after their assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq are done.

“He definitely was very good about hiding his feelings,” Kristen Fabacher said of her husband, Luke, 35, an Army sergeant from Lafayette who took his life in 2008 after an Iraqi deployment. “The military trains them well to kind of get hold of their emotions during war, and sometimes that holds over when they return.”

Fabacher “loved the military,” his wife said, and would have signed up for another tour in Iraq or Afghanistan “if he didn’t have a wife and young child at home.” She said that when her husband did open up, he expressed guilt about the “eight friends of his that were killed in Iraq.”

“He said the loss was overwhelming. He felt guilty about it,” she said. “I knew he was depressed and I tried to nudge him to seek help, and we did go to counseling, though he really wouldn’t open up about his feelings.”

Their daughter, Abigail, who turns 3 in February, lately has been asking about her dad. “She knows that most kids in school have a mother and father and she says ‘I want my daddy.’ It’s hard. I told her that Daddy is in heaven and in the sky and watches over her every day, but that she just can’t see him,” Fabacher said.

'He never wanted to talk'

Lisa Anthony, the stepmother of Justin Treadway, 28, of Independence, who took his life in 2008 after serving with the Army in Afghanistan, said her stepson faced painful flashbacks of military battles.

“He was gong to the VA Hospital in New Orleans for treatment, but he never wanted to talk about what was troubling him,” Anthony said. “There was no doubt he was depressed.”

Vandra Jervis Brescher, whose son, Army Sgt. Keith Aaron Brescher, 28, took his own life in 2008, said he came back from his third deployment to Iraq depressed and suffering from flashbacks. Sometimes, she said, he would go through the motions of cocking his gun, as if he were still on the battlefield, instead of his home in Hammond.

“He was a changed person when he came back from Afghanistan the last time,” Vandra Brescher said. He didn’t socialize with people, the way he used to, and mostly stayed to himself. His mood swings sometimes changed in an instant. He could get mad about just about anything.”

Though he was receiving treatment from the Veterans Affairs, Brescher said he wouldn’t discuss his problems with her.

'Toxic, deadly hazard'

The military is trying to change long-held military dogma that admitting problems is a weakness that will be looked down upon by commanders and peers, perhaps jeopardizing any chance of advancement.

“We must double down on our commitment to eliminate, not just to minimize, but to eliminate stigma, that toxic, deadly hazard that all too often leads to needless suffering and loss,” said Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton at this week’s military suicide conference.

During the conference, retired Army Maj. Ed Pulido, who lost a leg in 2004 to a roadside bomb in Iraq, said he seriously contemplated suicide as he endured multiple surgeries, blood transfusions and other painful treatments.

“I didn’t know how I was going to provide for my family, and that to me was the hardest thing that I’d struggle with through that journey because when they took my leg they took so much away,” said Pulido, an Oklahoma resident.

Thanks to the unflinching loyalty of his wife and the love of his daughter, who was 3 when the attack occurred and offered to buy her father the present of a new leg, along with the encouragement of fellow soldiers, and an empathetic therapist and chaplain, Pulido said he rediscovered his will to survive.

“Challenge is sitting on the battlefield almost losing my life, triumph is taking the first step after amputation, and change is living with the dark wounds or those mental health wounds of war, and learning that with the right support systems in place, I could truly have a great life.”

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