Eighteen a Day?

American men and women put their personal life aside and entered into the Air Force, Navy, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, and Space Command, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Some do the initial enlistment and get out, some stay for another enlistment or two, and some become "Lifers" and stay until retirement. Regardless of how long they served, they answered the call and became veterans.

Veterans make up less than 8% of the population of the United States of America and as our older brothers get promoted to Valhalla, that percentage is dropping, it's estimated that by 2045 the number will drop from the current 19 million to 12 million or 3.6% of the total population.

Of the more than 16 million American men and women who served in the armed forces during WWII only 240,000, about 3% remain with us. An estimated 295 WWII veterans pass away every day, and that rate is continuing to increase. Keep in mind that the WWII veterans who enlisted at the age of 18 in 1941 will be 100 years old in 2023.

More than 5 million Americans served in the Korean war, about 500,000 are still with us but we are losing over 600 every day.

Vietnam is harder to calculate due to the convoluted, politicized nature of the conflict. Who is a Vietnam Veteran is something that few agencies agree upon. I find it easier to ask the veteran if he's a Vietnam Veteran, if he says "Yes," then he's a Vietnam veteran. According to the American War Library, as of February 28, 2019, approximately 610,000 Americans who served in land forces during the Vietnam War or in air missions over Vietnam between 1954 and 1975 are still alive to this day. The New York Times estimated that there were 8.4 million Vietnam veterans still alive in 2000. It was also projected that, from here, 138,000 Vietnam veterans are expected to die each year.

Personally I'm a rare breed of veteran, I enlisted during the Vietnam era, and retired after Desert Storm. I spent most of my time in the Strategic Air Command keeping nuclear loaded bombers on alert, so I guess you could call me a Cold War Warrior, and considering the fact that I spent many years in North Dakota, the name is quite appropriate.

In the years since the attacks on September 11, 2001, to the needless deaths of 13 heroes on August 26, 2021, a total of 7,057 US service members died in military operations around the world: Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, everywhere. If you add the number of everyone that died from the attacks on 9/11/2001 you have 10,034 Americans dead due to enemy action. During the same time, the official number of suicides among veterans, including active-duty military personnel reached 30,177 fatalities. Three times as many US servicemen died at their own hand than by enemy action.

The suicide rate for veterans is 1.5 times higher than that of the general population.

The suicide rate among female veterans compared to non-Veteran adult women is 2.5 times higher.

In 2016, about 58% of all veterans who committed suicide were aged 55 years or older.

About 22 veterans commit suicide a day, and nearly three quarters are not under VA care.

Twenty-two veterans, your brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters - folks that volunteered to put themselves in harm's way to protect you, kill themselves every single day. And it's not the young troops coming back from a long, dangerous deployment that are killing themselves, more than half of the 22 veterans that die by their own hand, an estimated 13 of those 22 per day are over 50. Most were out of the service before 9/11.

Some veterans' advocates say it's easier for older veterans to feel America has forgotten their sacrifices. "You know, 'We're just old guys, and we're going to die, so why pay much attention to us?... That is the kind of the feeling that some of our members have," said Tom Berger, executive director of the Vietnam Veterans of America national health council. But on capitol hill efforts to combat veterans' suicides, specifically among older veterans, are nonexistent. Being ignored by their elected representatives cements the feeling that veterans have that we're expected to simply get the hell out of the way and die.

Our "friends" in congress have their wingmen at the "think tank" of Task and Purpose.com. Stacy Bare wrote an article that implied that 22 a day is a lie, by his logic only 1 soldier a day on active duty in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars commits suicide. He failed to admit that he ignored veterans who served in Desert Storm, Somalia, Afghanistan Civil war, the War on Terror, Enduring Freedom (Philippines), Enduring Freedom (Africa), the Cold War, Grenada, Panama, Cold War, Vietnam, Korea, and WWII. He counted just active duty in Afghanistan and got the numbers wrong. When you add the 21 suicide victims of those ignored and forgotten kerfuffles you surprisingly find that the number comes out to... 22. It's amazing how math works.

For years veterans support groups like the American Legion and AmVets have been saying that among veterans, 22 lives a day are lost to suicide, I remember the bittersweet joy when the word came out that the number dropped to 21. I posted that number on Facebook and was immediately jumped by a millennial who has never picked up a gun in his life. He was quite adamant that the number of daily suicides was much lower than that. This young intellectual informed me that the US government put the number much lower at 17 or 18 per day. Like many veterans I don't put my faith in government figures, I've learned better, I put my faith in an actual body count.

In September 2022 the VA published its National Veterans Suicide Prevention Annual Report, highlighting a 10% decrease in Veterans suicide from 2018 to 2020, while at the same time the DoD reported a suicide rate of 15%. Keep in mind that the DoD report covers people that are currently in uniform: active-duty, national guard and reserve. The VA report covers those of us who are no longer in uniform, and the groups I work with count all men and women who swore a sacred oath to defend the Constitution of the United States regardless of uniform status.

The DoD report stated that 580 service members (active duty, guard, and reserve) took their own lives in calendar year 2020, an average of 1.58 deaths per day. In calendar year 2021 the number dropped to 519 young soldiers killing themselves, an average of 1.42 soldiers per day. Why isn't this headline news?

Somehow in the jumble of numbers the veteran suicide rate claimed by the VA plummeted from 18.6 deaths per day to 16.8 in 2020, an amazing feat, why wasn't this being proclaimed from the rooftops? Instead, the VA publicized a new suicide prevention hotline and offered a cash reward for an idea to prevent veteran suicide.

The numbers that the VA published showed that over 6,000 veterans took their lives in 2019. Combining active duty and veterans, in 2019, a total of 6,780 men and women that volunteered to protect you ended up in such deep sorrow that the only way out that they could find was through death. And it's headline news nowhere.

That's when I found an article on LinkedIn penned by Army Brigadier General (Retired) Jack Hammond. General Hammond is the Chief Executive of the Home Base Center of Excellence for Veteran and Family Care. (Pro Tip: To tell the difference between a retired enlisted and a retired officer, count the number of syllables in their job title, the officer will go for the highest number of syllables in their job title, the enlisted with just be happy with having a job)

I don't remember why I was pursuing the pages of LinkedIn, for those of you who are unfamiliar with LinkedIn, it's a Facebook for business types. Like Facebook there is a lot of "Look at me!" going on, but the pictures associated with the pleas for attention feature well-dressed professional people, and quite often a tie is worn. Additionally, instead of the cat pictures and reposted memes that fill Facebook's pages, reposted articles from business journals or occasionally self-generated business-related articles can be found on LinkedIn. But on rare occasions an article that is unassociated with sales quotas and network security leaps off the pages and grabs your attention, one article in particular grabbed me by the throat.

General Hammond points out why many of us don't trust the DOD or the VA and the numbers they put out. The last time we had a veteran acting as POTUS was two decades ago and since that time the VA's budget increased 500% to $301.4 billion per year, yet at the very same time our Veteran population in America has shrunk by 24.6%. Only 5.9 million of America's 18 million Veterans receive care at the VA today. We get an annual checkup, maybe a pair of glasses, and a comfortable waiting room to be ignored in as we wait.

With a 2023 budget of $301,400,000,000.00 the VA could easily pay the monthly Medicare costs of all veterans then turn their massive resources to issues such as mental health. Or, the VA could just write each of the 5.9 million veterans who receive VA healthcare a check for $50,000 every year and say, "Go get your own health care" and still have money left over for administrative costs. $301.4 Billion is FU money on a grand scale, so why is veteran suicide even a thing? Why do veterans have to wait months for counseling? Hell, why do I have to wait 24 months for a pair of glasses?

But that's not the shocking information that Hammond dug up. While the VA claims that 16 to 18 veterans take their lives every single day, the age- and sex- adjusted suicide rate for veterans was more than 57% higher than non-veteran adults, which should be enough to raise eyebrows. General Hammond's article quotes the America's Warrior Partnership (AWP), a national suicide prevention nonprofit which claims that as awful as these numbers are, it's still a huge undercount.

America's Warrior Partnership (AWP) immediately challenged the VA report, launching their own investigation into veteran suicide named Operation Deep Dive, their summary report (link below) states "former service members take their own lives each year at a rate approximately 2.4 times greater than previously reported by the VA."

The Operation Deep Dive report states that the Veteran suicide rate is actually 37% greater than the rate reported by the VA and there are 24 confirmed suicides each day, not the 16-18 reported by the VA. For this investigation, America's Warrior Partnership (AWP) worked alongside Duke University and the University of Alabama using death records from eight states and they corroborated their data with the Department of Defense. The VA, on the other hand, was using data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) which has recently been under fire for their botched handling of the recent pandemic.

Operation Deep Dive discovered that the determination of suicide primarily depended on the police detective's report and/or the coroner's report. Additionally, the states failed to verify the victim's veteran status. When these errors are corrected, we find that approximately 24 veterans die each day by suicide as compared to the VA's average of 17.7 veteran suicides per day.

Undercounting suicides is not an unknown phenomenon, in a study conducted in 2014 titled "Comparative Analysis of Suicide, Accidental, and Undetermined Cause of Death Classification" (link below) researchers found out that "Suicide determination is not standardized across medical examiners, and many suspected suicides are later classified as accidental or undetermined."

If there is no obvious clue (Suicide note, smoking pistol, empty bottle of prescription pills, etc.) these deaths are classified as accidental or undetermined. Many veterans prefer to hide their suicide to hide their sorrow, to save their family embarrassment or prevent financial impact on the family. Essentially local detectives, coroners, and the VA did not dig deep enough into the details of the victim to properly determine the victim's veteran status or review the details of the act to determine if this was a suicide or an accident.

If the Operation Deep Dive report is accurate, and undercounted suicides are figured in, then the number is not 24 suicides every day, the number of veteran suicides could be as high as 44, nearly 2.5 times higher than the number released by the VA.

In their investigation Operation Deep Dive found some very unique risk factors that influenced a Veteran's decision to kill themselves. They found that the longer a Veteran served in the military, the less likely they were to commit suicide by a declining rate of 2% per year served.

In general, gender and race diversity were not associated with increased odds of suicide. Most veteran suicides were white males.

Also, it was found that living with a partner decreased the odds of suicide by nearly 40%.

Data indicates that veterans are at a higher risk of dying from suicide or natural causes such as heart disease or cancer before age 64 than those who never served in the military.

The report also assessed that those who served in the military for less than 3 years were at greatest risk for suicide and that demotion during military service was associated with an increased suicide risk of 56%.

My older cousin had enlisted for 2 years in the Marine Corps during Vietnam, they had short two year enlistments for people to stay behind and perform maintenance duties while everyone was overseas. The short timers avoided the draft, didn't go to Vietnam, and still served their country, a win-win for many. My cousin claimed that he was "The Worst Marine Ever" and ended up getting sent home a few months earlier than expected with the "Big Chicken Dinner" (Bad Conduct Discharge). After that, he married his high school sweet-heart, had two beautiful children, and became a regional manager for a forest products company. We talked a few times at family gatherings, and he always talked about having regret about the way he acted in his Marine days. Then one day just before the big Six Oh he drove his motorcycle off the road into a tree. His death was written off as an unexplained accident.

Cheree Tham, AWP's Chief of Programs and Initiatives said: "By merging identified state death records with military service data and incorporating other individualized sources such as VA health care and benefits numbers, we can develop better tools and methods to prevent these heartbreaking incidents that shatter lives and communities."

In other words, a person's veteran status is not a secret, there is no reason why a quick data search on every person's veteran status cannot be done by someone in the dizzying bureaucracy involved in reporting a death. Then that data can be relayed to competent agencies for proper use.

Once upon a time, when you screwed up and had a stripe taken away, you were not just allowed, you were expected to dig your way out of the hole you dug, and as a man I understand how affirming that action is. I've talked to many a veteran who has lost as many stripes as they earned and came out better, stronger, and smarter for the chance to make up for their errors, and the commanders were more willing to enforce discipline when they knew that the punishment that they mete out was a corrective action.

If a young serviceman finds himself out on the street in three years or less, they were more than likely removed from active duty through court martial. In today's all volunteer force if you lose a stripe you have no chance to get it back, no opportunity to make up for your actions and no chance to reenlist. Commanders are less inclined to mete out discipline because while taking a stripe will show the enlisted man the error of his ways, that commander just permanently lost a productive airman / soldier / sailor / marine / coastie. When a future employer sees that you've been put out of the service under less than honorable circumstances he doesn't know why, he just sees that you're not a candidate for his work force, and a candidate for suicide is born.

I've spent a lot of time hacking on the VA, and I have to admit, most of the people in the VA system that I've met were wonderful and they were doing the best that they could while contending with COVID-19 and the VA hierarchy. The VA facility I normally went to was located in a former Sears outlet in a semi-abandoned strip-mall, which did not fill me with the sense that a big chunk of $301.4 Billion dollars a year was being spent in my area. My area happens to be home to 3 large military bases in an area where a lot of veterans live. At the strip mall I never saw a doctor, I met some good Nurse Practitioners (and one of a different caliber), but when you have a life-threatening vascular condition, you tend to want to see a qualified doctor.

I did get to go to a very nice facility to get a pair of glasses, which fit nice and look good, and give me exquisite headaches, but for my vascular condition I had to drive 90 miles to a huge, very run-down, ancient facility that didn't see the touch of $301.4 Billion dollars either. When I saw the pulmonologist, he was excited to meet an actual zebra. A medical proverb is that when you hear hoofbeats expect to find horses not zebras, meaning that as you try to diagnose a patient look for common conditions (horses) don't waste your time looking for rare conditions (zebras). My condition is extremely rare, making me a checkered zebra. This facility didn't have the capability to diagnose or monitor my condition, and I left wondering what other veteran zebras do, and where did that $301.4 Billion go?

With a budget of $301,400,000,000.00, you're expected to provide results, what results is the VA providing? One could assume that claiming a veteran suicide rate of 18 per day when the actual rate could go as high as 44 is obfuscation of the highest order.

_____________________________________________________________________

Sources:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/va-data-accurate-we-losing-20-44-veterans-each-day-suicide-hammond/

-----------------------------------------

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/veteran-suicide-rate-lowest-years-va-advocates-worry/story?id=90204603

-----------------------------------------

Comparative Analysis of Suicide, Accidental, and Undetermined Cause of Death Classification

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4411039/

-----------------------------------------

Operation Deep Dive Summary

https://e55c5558-502f-457d-8a07-a49806f5ff14.usrfiles.com/ugd/e55c55_086099607d8649aa8b5227f106f24865.pdf

-----------------------------------------

Suicide: The Threat the Coast Guard Is Not Talking About

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/august/suicide-threat-coast-guard-not-talking-about

-----------------------------------------

VA Senior Staffers 'Failed' to Provide Accurate Data on EHR Training

https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2022/07/va-senior-staffers-failed-provide-accurate-data-ehr-training-watchdog-finds/374580/

-----------------------------------------

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/truth-22-veteran-suicides-day/

-----------------------------------------