Special to the Mirror by Joe Vaccaro
There are over 830,000 veterans residing in VA and that number includes some 700,000 men and over 130,000 women. Within those numbers are 669,000 plus war time veterans who have served their country in time of need. The Eastern Shore of VA lays claim to over 5,000 of those men and women who are living amongst us; also living amongst them is the dark potential of suicide.
According to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) there are 20 (22 according to other sources) veterans who take their own lives every day according to a press release made in To make matters worse, some of this data is from 1999 through 2011 and only contains information from 21 states with larger states like California, Texas and Illinois not reporting any information. Throughout the years combat veterans have been returning home seemingly unscathed by the battles they have fought yet the suicide rate for our recently returning veterans continues to climb. The troops, especially the career minded, view any cry for help as a career blemish that could tarnish a record of valor, hard work and halt an upward climb through the ranks. The attempt to gather facts to combat this national tragedy is too skewed to be of any solid value.
Part of the problem is the fact that there’s no uniform reporting system regarding these deaths. So it’s up to a coroner or funeral director to enter a veteran status or note a suicide on a death certificate. This makes it extremely difficult to determine a veteran’s status unless the person is known to them which begs the next question of how do they collect that data on homeless veterans? A recent news article explained this very succinctly when an official stated “Birth and death certificates are only as good as the information that is entered”. However, there are also families out there who might pressure officials not to list “suicide” as the cause of death for fear of the stigma associated with such an event. The VA itself has acknowledged significant limitations” in its data collection and specifically noted that “the ability of death certificates to fully capture female veterans was particularly low” and “younger or unmarried veterans and those with lower levels of education were also more likely to be missed on the death certificate.” [Read more…]