Lower suicide rate
Too many veterans aren’t getting the help they desperately need for mental issues.
Restaurant discounts and publicly thanking uniformed military personnel for their service are poor substitutes for this country’s failure to effectively address the unacceptable suicide rate among America’s veterans.
The Veterans Administration says 6,139 veterans died from suicide in 2017, the latest year with a statistical record. That makes 10 years in a row there have been more than 6,000 veteran suicides. The VA said the nearly 17 veteran suicides per day in 2017 was 1.5 times the rate for nonveteran adults, which has also been rising steeply.
While no single reason can be blamed for the suicide rate, many observers believe the prolonged service that is typical with an allvolunteer military like ours can play a major role. Multiple deployments in war zones can take a heavy toll.
A record-tying 321 active-duty members of the military took their lives last year, including 57 Marines, 68 sailors, 58 airmen, and 138 soldiers. That matches a mark set in 2012.
Other factors come into play when soldiers become veterans. The VA says many discover the highly developed skills they obtained in the military don’t always translate to highlevel civilian jobs. Unemployment, poverty, even homelessness too often becomes their future.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development reported 37,878 veterans were homeless in 2018, with 14,566 living on the street or unsheltered. That’s slightly better than 2017, when 40,020 veterans were homeless and 15,330 were street dwellers. But it’s still not good.
The VA says patients at Veterans Health Administration hospitals who had indications of homelessness or received services related to homelessness had higher rates of suicide than other patients at VHA hospitals.
Social isolation also plays a role. Suicide rates for VHA patients were highest among those who were divorced, widowed, or never married, said the VA’s annual suicide prevention report. Suicide rates were also higher among veterans living in rural areas.
The VHA hospitals were cited by the Rand Corporation for effective suicide prevention programs. But most veterans in general don’t go to a VHA facility when they need medical services and the overwhelmed civilian mental health system isn’t a reliable alternative.
An executive order issued in March by President Trump called for a “comprehensive national public health road map for preventing suicide among our nation’s veterans.” But the directive did little more than create a Cabinet-level task force to consider solutions.
That grand gesture won’t be worth the time spent to announce it if it doesn’t result in action.
More than 47,000 Americans, including veterans, committed suicide in 2017. Many of those deaths may be linked to this nation’s inadequate mental health system. Trump alluded to that deficiency when he blamed mental illness for a spate of mass murders, but nothing has been done about it.
Beyond addressing the mental health system, America needs to take a new look at this country’s all-volunteer military 46 years after the draft ended. Should deployments be more limited? Is this country overextended militarily given its limited forces?
Veterans Day is a good time to begin considering those questions. Answering them could go a long way toward reducing veteran suicides.