Why suicide rate among veterans may be more than 22 a day – CNN.com

veteran suicide

Apparently the data on veteran suicide is actually worse than it seems. Based on the rates from incomplete data, we can estimate that at least 80,000 U.S. Military veterans have committed suicide since the conflicts began in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we had better data, the number would likely be closer to 100,000.

That’s more deaths than the official number of casualties in Vietnam. Of course the number of suicides following Vietnam was also probably higher than we’ll ever know. These deaths aren’t officially considered casualties but I believe they should be counted when we consider the real cost of war.

 

(CNN) — Every day, 22 veterans take their own lives. That’s a suicide every 65 minutes. As shocking as the number is, it may actually be higher.

The figure, released by the Department of Veterans Affairs in February, is based on the agency’s own data and numbers reported by 21 states from 1999 through 2011. Those states represent about 40% of the U.S. population. The other states, including the two largest (California and Texas) and the fifth-largest (Illinois), did not make data available.

Who wasn’t counted?

People like Levi Derby, who hanged himself in his grandfather’s garage in Illinois on April 5, 2007. He was haunted, says his mother, Judy Casper, by an Afghan child’s death. He had handed the girl a bottle of water, and when she came forward to take it, she stepped on a land mine.

When Derby returned home, he locked himself in a motel room for days. Casper saw a vacant stare in her son’s eyes. A while later, Derby was called up for a tour of Iraq. He didn’t want to kill again. He went AWOL and finally agreed to an “other than honorable” discharge.

Derby was not in the VA system, and Illinois did not send in data on veteran suicides to the VA.

Experts have no doubt that people are being missed in the national counting of veteran suicides. Luana Ritch, the veterans and military families coordinator in Nevada, helped publish an extensive report on that state’s veteran suicides.

Read the complete story at: Why suicide rate among veterans may be more than 22 a day – CNN.com.