I learned today that two Iraq war veterans took their own lives in two consecutive days. Is the mental health crisis within the ranks of the military and recent veterans already so bad that we will be seeing a suicide everyday?
As kkjohnson detailed over the weekend, 25 year-old Jonathan Schulzetook his life on January 16th, in St. Cloud, MN, after telling the VA that he was thinking of killing himself, only to be told that he was number 26 on the waiting list for mental health services.
The next day, Jan. 17th, 23 year-old Michael Bramer, a wounded Army veteran, took his life.
Just as this country had no plan for an Iraq occupation, we have no plan to address the needs of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who served in combat. Our veterans will pay a terrible price for the Bush follies. We must do everything we can to ebb this disaster.
While commonsense and history tells us that we will face a multi-generational problem, social scientists are now collecting data to support what we know intuitively.
A recent Pentagon Task Force reported "the suicide rate among soldiers supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom almost doubled in 2005, going up to 19.9 per 100,000 troops from 10.5 per 100,000 the year before." (This would not include recent veterans who commit suicide after their service is completed.)
And a just released Harvard study `provides disturbing facts about the total lack of readiness in the US government, as more and more military personnel come back home. According to the report:
• There is CURRENTLY a backlog more than 400,000 pending VA claims and unless major changes and resources are invested into the system, this number will grow to 750,000 within two years.
• If the same percentage of Iraq/Afghanistan military personnel receive VA medical care as did the Gulf War veterans (48%), as estimated 700,000 new patients will be injected into the VA system.
• Depending of the length of the current conflicts and health care inflation, new veterans will require between $350 to $700 billion in disability benefits and medical care services over the course of their lifetime.
But these are just the numbers. We must remember the names. And we must act. I urge everyone who is reading this post to call, write or email your members of Congress and ask them what is our plan to help new veterans and their families?