The casualties continue to mount after they come home ...

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:05 AM on May 28, 2007.

A rose for their graves ...

• David Fickel, a 25-year-old Minnesotan honorably discharged from the Marine Corps after serving in Iraq, used a shotgun to take his own life on Memorial Day, 2006
• Linda Michel, a 33-year-old Navy medic from Albany, who served at a U.S.-run prison near Baghdad, returned to her husband and three children last October and, two weeks later, shot and killed herself
• Jonathan Schulze, a 25-year-old from New Prague, MN, asked to be admitted to a VA hospital on January 11 because he was thinking of killing himself. Told he was No. 26 on the waiting list, he hung himself at his parents' farm, leaving behind his pregnant wife and a young daughter
• Michael Bramer, a 23-year-old from Boston who had served with the Army's 82d Airborne Division, turned up the surround sound on his television on January 17 and took his own life
• Jessica Rich, a 24-year-old Army Reservist and mother of a 7-year-old son, despaired of leaving behind her nightmares and flashbacks of Iraq. On February 8, she drove her car into oncoming traffic on I-25 outside of Denver and died
• Chris Dana, a 23-year-old Iraq war veteran from Helena who friends said wore his uniform and boots for weeks at a time, even to sleep, shut himself in his bedroom in March, put a blanket over his head, and shot himself

It is only recently that I have come to think of myself as a war widow. When my husband Daniel came home from Vietnam in 1970, the relationship between combat-related stress and suicide was officially unrecognized. When Daniel took his own life, it never occurred to me to blame the war. I thought that if only I had been kinder, more patient, more vigilant, I might have prevented his death. The shame and guilt on top of my grief were a terrible burden. It was decades before I could find some compassion and forgiveness for that young woman who had no idea what she was up against.

In the years since Daniel's death, there has been a steady stream of reports, many from mainstream sources, claiming shocking numbers of suicides among Vietnam veterans. Rather than tracking or investigating those claims, the government has first refused to investigate and then used the lack of evidence to argue that the claims were untrue.

That disingenuous stance mirrors the current official response. While a mental health advisory team was sent to Iraq in 2003 to investigate alarming reports of suicides among American troops, the team concluded that soldiers were killing themselves, not because of the horrors of combat, but for what was labeled "underdeveloped life coping skills". The Army's Surgeon General told "Stars and Stripes" in December that he had "no evidence linking suicides with multiple deployments or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" "(W)e've had young soldiers," he elaborated, "who will get bad relationship news and walk right into a Porta-Potty and end their lives."

Since 2003, the suicide rate for active-duty soldiers has continued to rise. The Army camouflages the real numbers as non-combat-related accidents. Veterans' suicides are not included on official casualty lists because they are not considered service-related deaths.

This administration's policies regarding PTSD and combat-related suicide are consistent with their claims to support the troops while making budgetary decisions that endanger them. In the past six years, more than 22,500 soldiers, most diagnosed with PTSD or traumatic brain injury, have been dismissed from service with a diagnosis of "personality disorder," which, considered a pre-existing condition, absolves the VA of all responsibility for their future care. Despite cries of foul from psychiatrists, veterans' rights groups, injured soldiers and their families, and even the military officials required to process these dismissals, the practice continues and successful appeals are almost non-existent. "The Army Times" reports a backlog of some 600,000 veterans' benefits claims on appeal. On average, it takes the VA 177 days to process an original claim and 657 days to process an appeal. If psychically injured veterans die with their case under appeal, the case dies with them.

Last week, a report from the inspector general of Veterans Affairs finally acknowledged that veterans are at increased risk of suicide. Multiple and extended deployments are causing more psychological problems that become lethal in the absence of available care when they return. If we are to prevent another epidemic of death like that which followed the war in Vietnam, the VA health care system must provide immediate and quality care for our veterans. Cheating citizens who have risked their lives for their country out of promised and desperately needed benefits will surely save the government billions of dollars. Just as surely, it will push too many past the limits of their despair.

As we remember our war dead on this Memorial Day, let us include the tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans whose names are not on the Memorial Wall and the soldiers and veterans of these current wars whose psychic injuries have proved every bit as deadly as any bullet or bomb. David Fickel, Zackery Bowen, Linda Michel, Jonathan Schulze, Michael Bramer, Jessica Rich, and my husband Daniel are not just statistics. Their deaths were personal tragedies, but they are also cautionary tales

Tagged as: iraq, memorial day

Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam Veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006 (Beacon Press).