"Stunning": CBS News Discovers "Hidden Epidemic" of Military Suicides

Tonight CBS will air the first of a two-part series on the "hidden epidemic" of military suicides, revealing numbers that CBS calls "stunning." The report examines data on the suicide rate amongst veterans once they return home, which indicates a serious mental health issue — and a hidden mortality rate.

"We first started researching military suicides because it had never been done before," said Armen Keteyian, CBS News' chief investigative correspondent in a statement forwarded by CBS News. "But when all the data was collected, we were astonished. I had no idea how much of an epidemic CBS uncovered. We expect this to be a wake up call."

Keteyian previewed the segment on the "CBS Early Show" today, saying that the CBS five-month study found that vets were "more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 as non-vets." Chillingly, though the Veterans Affairs Department estimates that "some 5,000 ex-servicemen and women will commit suicide this year,' that's a lowball estimate. Said Keteyian: "Our numbers are much higher than that, overall."

[Update, 5:30pm: CBS has just released some of those numbers: "At least 120 Americans who served in the U.S. military killed themselves per week in 2005, CBS News learned in a five-month investigation into veteran suicides. That's 6,256 veteran suicides in one year, in 45 states."]

According to a CBS spokesperson, the report represents the first time an actual count of veteran suicides at home has been tallied, as opposed to estimates. "We also have number from the DOD of active duty suicides that we believed have never been reported before dating back to 1995," said the spokesperson. "Many believe, including the family members, that they VA hasn't done a true nationwide count of the numbers (which are stunning) because they just don't want to know." This echoes findings in a CBS report on the matter back in January 2004, which focused on soldier suicides during deployment but which also noted that the Pentagon did not count post-release suicides, and that a pre-Iraq war army study had predicted "an impending soldier-suicide crisis" (which, according to critics, was "largely ignored").

The two-part series will focus tonight on the numbers, and tomorrow on how the Dept. of Veterans Affairs is handling this problem (our guess, based on the above: Not well). According to CBS, tonight's segment runs 5 minutes — long for a newscast (though tonight is a single-sponsor broadcast (Pfizer) which will definitely save a few minutes).

Military suicides have been in the news recently owing to the passage last month of the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act (HR. 327), named for 22-year-old Army Reservist Joshua Omvig who commited suicide a few months after his return from Iraq. The bill "directs the Department of Veterans Affairs to develop and implement a comprehensive program to reduce the incidence of suicide among veterans," by virtue of better screening of veteran patients for mental health, tracking of veterans, better suicide prevention training for VA staff (including designating one suicide-specific counselor at each facility), and a 24-hour mental-health care, including a hotline. The legislation also requires the VA to report back on "status, timeline and costs for complete implementation within 2 years" within 90 days (i.e. by late January). Hopefully they can reverse the trend. If not, hopefully CBS will still be there.

The Veteran Suicide Epidemic [CBS News] (video here)
Vets' Suicide Rate "Stunning" [CBS News]

Related:
Veterans' Suicides: a Hidden Cost of Bush's Wars [Alternet]
Paul Rieckhoff: Suicide: Vets Fight The War Within [HuffPo]
H.R. 5771 [109th]: Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act [GovTrack.us]

Comments

[wordvarc]

'

'w' plays his war like a risky business venture or fraternity prank while those who face the reality of 'w's failure are overwhelmed and untreated.

Give 'w' a HumVee and let him patrol outside the 'green zone.'
.

[NormBlon]

Unfortunately, your soldiers' plight is all down to their soft upbringing. Few GIs have the backbone for war any more. I can't blame them: the U.S. is always ar war with somebody, from Kennedy's mistakes in Cuba and Vietnam through Reagan's "proud" victory over 100 Cubans in Grenada and HW's bombing of the poor quarter of Panama City to GW's lying, cheating involvement in Iraq. It's got to be hard going off to fight "for your country" when you know most of the world is disgusted with the U.S.A. right now.

[Earl]

I think it would be interesting to see a chart of antidepressants prescribed by the VA from 1950 to the present.

[Pantelleria01]

I am a vet of the VietNam era. 1968-69. HHC 1-18th, 1st INF DIV. In boot camp one guy shot himself in the mouth. After VietNam in places where I worked before discharge other guys did it also. I am an American Indian; I say only because after the war I turned to the tribal elders, to the sweat lodge, an important, ancient teaching about living a good life. Those old Indians saved my life, turned my head around. Many Americans do not know that a number of Vets organized a plan to overthrow the government and start an armed revolution. I was approached by vets involved in this while I was recovering in Valley Forge. I was on a ward with over 2000 men missing arms and legs, sometimes both arms and legs. In the end the revolution was called off. Before it was called off US senators and other powerful people considered supporting this plan. I always thoughy America was lucky that time. Over the years I was glad we never went through with it.

When the leadership sees our children as expendable trash to throw at their so-called enemies, things have gone to far already. It is a tragedy that so few are pushing for the truth. This many bad things will come back on us, and sooner rather than later.

What if they gave a war and nobody came? We all just let them go off to war. These days will be known for the millions of people who at the same moment in history just stuck their heads up their asses and went to sleep.

Being born here does not mean you are from here. Most of you are ancestors of the children of other soldiers who said ok when the bosses asked for their lives.

The old Indians told me that their word for "modern America", translated literally, means "Dead World".

Best Regards
dog soldier

[KenArnold]

Took CBS a few years to wake up to what many of us involved with the vets know. Yet sounds like they are are going to soften it a bit. Two times the rate of non-vets? I've heard figures from conservative sources of 4 times and no one's figures necessarily count all the death by police, death by vehicle, and other "suicides" made to look accidental or unintentional for the benefit of family and friends (and possibly insurance). A statistical analysis of deaths among OIF vets versus a non-vet peer group would be real investigative reporting and putting some of CBS massive resources behind some real research for a change.

imPEAChmEnt.
Ken

BTW: When will someone catch on and report on this administration's faking of inflation figures? Anyone having to buy shelter, energy, food, medical care, or just plain live, knows this low inflation stuff is BS. Looks at the commodity price trends for the past 10 years vs. "official inflation".

[habrow2]

Looks good to me. Is it possible to keep the discussion to the point?

[Moshe]

The seeds that are being sown right now should scare the living crap out of anyone that is still awake.

The economic rug is being pulled out from underneath the American Middle and Working classes, and their sons and daughters will then come home to families that increasingly lack the resources to meet their own needs, let alone the special needs of returning soldiers with serious physical, psychological, and emotional wounds.

Many Middle and Working class Americans are even losing their homes in the current tsunami of home foreclosures. And I just read an article confirming what I had suspected. The empty homes in many neighborhoods are becoming a magnet for crime. With growing homelessness, crime, and violence in their own neighborhoods, many of our returning veterans may not see that much difference between where they are coming from in Iraq and the emerging status of their own neighborhoods. A bullet is pretty much a bullet, sleeping on the street is pretty much sleeping on the street, and dying from lack of medical treatment is . . .

It doesn't have to be like this, but we are going to need capable leaders who actually give a rat's a-s about the future of America and the American People to start making positive changes a.s.a.p. It's not too late to start digging out of the hole our current "leaders" are still digging, but don't wait for the answers to come from Washington. The current crowd created the problems, and seem to think things are going just fine (and for them it may be).

For the rest of us though, life is getting a lot tougher very fast, and will continue to until the People take the answers to Washington, and retake control of their own government and their own future.

[richiemck]

Maybe someone at CBS watched the Australian news show "Dateline" online. They had a great report on the same story a couple of weeks ago.

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/

[Badwater]

Good thing that no one from the Bush family ever serves. While it's unfortunate that these commoners are commiting sucide, it would be a horrible tragedy if any of our royalty came to harm.

God save the Bush Family, right Republicans?

[Nyland8]

Wow ... this is shocking. CBS News is actually doing ... news !!! We can only imagine that somewhere along the line, this kind of story has become profitable again.

We here at HuffPo have known for some time about the decimation of our fighting forces, about the "hidden" casualties, about how the numbers game is played to reduce American awareness about the real tolls of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This story was posted three months ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/15/AR2007081502027.html?tid=informbox

How ironic that the administration that claims to be in defense of marriage is destroying so many marriages across the country.

Until death do they part.

8

.

[AkiraBergman]

Soldier suicides are a good sign. They show that even the puppets of the military industrial complex have conscience. I think these suicides are just the tip of the iceberg. Just like a bomb wounds much more people than it kills. Too many soldiers carry physical and mental wounds to the grave. A worse fate than killing yourself. Soldiers who see the reality of wars have a special responsibility to the society. Specially to the young and impressionable who are head hunted by the war mongers to fill their quotas.

[TekBoss]

Thanks to the Republicans, our vets get screwed again (and again and again).

[ResidentChimp]

CBS and HuffPO are breathless to exploit a sad story. If it will hurt the administration, then bring it on and blow it out of proportion. You can tell by the sympathetic posts by the huffers here, that they really caare.

[TLV]

"Lance Corporal James Blake Miller– better known as the Marlboro Marine–who is now jobless, divorced and near suicidal since being discharged from the military after being diagnosed with PTSD. With little aid from his government, Miller received help from an unlikely source — Luis Sinco, the LA Times photographer who snapped the famous picture of him during the battle of Fallujah in 2004. You can read Sinco’s story in the LAT here."

http://www.crooksandliars.com/

[Sanjong Thapa]

and CBS may have no one to forge documents as the news division eyes joining the writers strike.