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.”
Veterans make up approximately 10% of the U.S. population yet they are nearly 1 in every 5 suicides taking place in America. According to current VA studies, more than 69% of all veteran suicides were among those veterans who were 50 years and older. While there are a number of theories and speculative arguments why these deaths occur no one yet has come up with a accepted answer; least of all the family members of these veterans. One recent study by the American Medical Association (AMA) surprisingly revealed that the military members most likely prone to suicide were in fact those troops with fewer cumulative deployments days and in the combat specialist occupation.
The AMA suggested that “the rise in suicides amongst the active duty troops is the result of indirect cumulative occupational stresses over years of war.” The AMA further noted that “despite universal access to health care services, mandatory suicide prevention training, and other preventative efforts, suicide has still become one of the leading causes of death in the US military in recent years.”
The American Legion has several programs in place to help the active duty, reserve and retired veteran that includes the Legion Riders, Homeless Veterans Program, Honoring Veterans Program, National Emergency Fund and Operation Comfort Warrior. All of these programs seek to raise awareness and monies to support our troops and retired veterans. However, programs alone are not the answer and identifying some of the possible signs might be a more helpful way to help these veterans. The signs include but are not limited to: a previous suicide attempt or self-destructive behavior. a significant relationship, financial, medical or work-related problem, current or pending disciplinary or legal action, substance abuse, problems with a major life transition (e.g., retirement, discharge, divorce, etc.), loss of a close friend or family member, setbacks in military career or personal life, severe, prolonged stress that seems unmanageable, sense of powerlessness, helplessness or hopelessness, behavior that isolates a person from friends and family members, changes in sleep or appetite and decrease in personal hygiene.
Throughout the years Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been known by many names. During the American Civil War it was known as “soldier’s heart” and “shell shock” during WW I but the common denominator is the physical and psychological effects it has on the veteran. PTSD can take years to surface and when it does the people around their family member or friend should be aware of the preceding signs. When the band stops playing and the marching, military duties and formalities of service are done; that’s the time when that service member needs family and friends the most.
As warrior poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote “I walk the secret way with anger in my brain, O music through my clay, When will you sound again”? Help us to protect our veterans as they have helped to protect our country. Please support Post 56 in honoring all of our Veterans past and present this year on Friday, November 11th, 1100 AM, at the Cape Charles War Memorial.
Joe Vaccaro
PAO
American Legion Post 56
Ah, yes, Joe Vaccaro, when the band stops playing and the marching, military duties and formalities of service are done.
That’s the time when the service member needs family and friends the most, and for many reasons, they may not be able to be there, at all, as they may not be able to comprehend the pain, although they be acutely aware of it.
As a disabled combat veteran of the Viet Nam war who is a life member of the American Legion, albeit from the state of New York, not Virginia, I would like to take this moment to commend you for bringing the light of day on this subject in an effort to promote public understanding.
It is sorely needed to cut through the stereotypes and stigmas attached to PTSD that in some cases have been created and promoted by the “government” itself as a potent means of political retaliation against whistleblowers.
We have just such a case of political retaliation using PTSD as a political weapon against a public official who would not falsify government reports while a health officer, without a peep being raised by any veteran’s organization up here, or the Veterans’ Service Officer for the state of New York.
This story of the betrayal of a Viet Nam veteran who served his nation with distinction in Viet Nam in 1969, where he was awarded the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts, using PTSD as a weapon against him, begins back in 1988, with a story in the Albany, New York Times Union, 10 Janaury 1988, where we in the State of New York were informed that this health officer was involved in several fierce feuds with developers, the most public of which involved a politically connected land developer named Stephen Anderson, who, according to the Times Union, was attempting “to rally” the Rensselaer County legislature, Rensselaer County Executive John L. “Smiling Jack” Buono, and the New York State Health Department to make the health officer “more compliant,” where “compliant” means sleazy, slimy, willing to turn his back and take a brine.
In other words, turn him into a political whore, or get rid of him.
By October of 1988, it was clear to all in Rensselaer County that the first was not going to happen, so it would have to be the latter, and people, not only in Rensselaer County, but in state government across the river in Albany, New York were wondering about and betting on what line of attack the County of Rensselaer would use to get rid of this disabled veteran public health engineer.
The suspense was broken when on October 12, 1988, the disabled veteran engineer was told that he had upset some of the most-powerful men in Rensselaer County and could no longer be afforded the equal protection of the law, while then-Rensselaer County Executive John L. Buono appeared on the Chris Kapostacey show on TV-13 out of Menands, New York and announced in a very public way to the world that the disabled veteran could no longer work for Rensselaer County in his capacity as associate public health engineer because he was considered by Buono to be “mentally ill and dangerous” because he was a Viet Nam combat veteran.
Talk about blatant stigmatization, there it is, staring you right in the face.
With that public statement by Buono smearing this disabled veteran with the false charge of being “mentally ill and dangerous,” a serious charge which when publicly leveled, cannot be refuted, this disabled veteran’s career as an engineer was destroyed, just like that.
Any hopes that veteran might have had for being a good, productive American citizen upon his return to this country from Viet Nam disappeared in smoke that day when that statement by Buono was broadcast by Channel 13 and Chris Kapostacy Jansing.
All the years he spent rehabilitating himself as a productive citizen upon his return from Viet Nam, the years he spent in engineering school, the hours he spent getting a master’s degree on a fellowship from the USEPA so he could be a responsible public servant in America were all for naught.
The horror story, not only for this Viet Nam veteran, but for all veterans diagnosed with PTSD only got worse on Wednesday, February 22, 1989, when the Troy, New York RECORD, the newspaper of record for Rensselaer County in New York state, ran an article wherein Deputy Rensselaer County Attorney Gordon Mayo was quoted as follows as saying the Viet Nam veteran engineer suffered from a “post-combat stress condition that could result in irrational behavior.”
There, Joe Vaccaro, is what stigmatization of combat veterans with PTSD as a means of political retaliation in the State of New York looks like in real life.
I know this story to be true, because that disabled veteran so stigmatized was me.
Sadly, for me and for all other Viet Nam veterans who have been diagnosed with PTSD who have been branded by this Deputy Rensselaer County Attorney Mayo as suffering from a post-combat stress condition that could result in irrational behavior, we shall suffer from this stigmatization for the rest of our lives, and for me, no help from the federal government or state government or any veterans organizations has been forthcoming, nor based on my experience since this nightmare began, will such aid and comfort be forthcoming, and as a responsible American citizen, I wanted to take a moment to bring this injustice to your attention as an officer of the American Legion as we head into another Veteran’s Day.
To ALL of America’s many veterans on this Veterans’ Day, welcome home and THANK YOU for your service
I have been told by several Vets that have spent many hours at VA hospitals and facilities that many, many Vets are using PTSD as an easy way to get what they ‘want’ from the VA. I am not saying that PTSD is not real to a vast portion of the Vet population, but many are faking it to get meds. They say it is the easy to fake it.
That, of course, is a two-way street, Stuart Bell .
The VA is as much using those vets to push pills as those vets are using the VA to score pills.
Pushing pills is good for the BIG PHARM industry here in the United States of America, and what is good for BIG PHARM is good for the US GDP, and so, pills get pushed.
No rocket science degree is required to figure that math out.
And doctors have to be complicit in that pill-pushing scheme, Stuart Bell, because without a script, those pills cannot get out the door.
For the record, I am diagnosed with PTSD and I take no meds of any kind, so I personally would take exception to the stereotype of the PTSD veteran as a drug addict trying to continually scam the VA to score pills, but at the same time, I know there are many in America who hold to that stereotype of the PTSD veteran as having to be somebody mentally deranged, so I am not surprised to hear it being mentioned once again in here.
I can say as a PTSD veteran that all of these stereotypes make our lives a living hell, but would anyone care?
As a Viet Nam veteran diagnosed with combat-related PTSD many years ago now, I would like to thank Joe Vaccaro for bringing some needed light on this very much misunderstood and socially maligned subject of PTSD, as well as Stuart Bell for presenting us with popular stereotypes concerning those with PTSD extant in society today in the United States of America today, as well as focusing some needed light on what I consider to be a broken system that is now well-likely far beyond repair, for both political and economic reasons.
When I was DIAGNOSED with PTSD, it was at a time when the term was largely unknown.
And I stress the word, “diagnosed.”
I didn’t go to the VA at the urging of a veterans’ service officer for one of the main-stream veterans’ groups in America to get a free ride on a disability rating that would then give me access to meds, as Stuart Bell hints or implies is the case with PTSD veterans above here.
I sure as hell did not want the letters PTSD placed in my VA medical records, as in so many ways, that is a KISS OF DEATH to any future positive plans the veteran might have, as it causes one to be foreveraftermore viewed with suspicion by everybody in America who is “normal” and is quite proud of it.
I am sure people in here must remember all the way back to childhood when someone “different” was viewed as “cracked,” and to make fun of them, the others who weren’t “cracked” would look at the person they was thought was, and then point at their own heads and make circling gestures with their fingers that were supposed to signify the person being singled out was not “normal.”
Alleged mental problems here in America, no matter what the politicians might tell us PTSD veterans, stereotype us and get us shunted off into some dark corner of society.
Look at the famous case of Thomas Francis Eagleton (September 4, 1929 – March 4, 2007) was a United States Senator from Missouri, serving from 1968 to 1987.
He is best remembered for briefly being the Democratic vice presidential nominee under George McGovern in 1972.
However, he suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life, resulting in several hospitalizations, which were kept secret from the public and when they were revealed it humiliated the McGovern campaign and Eagleton was forced to quit the race.
“Get out of here, you’re a head case, we don’t want your kind around!”
So, is it really all that much of a surprise that these afflicted veterans see no other path than suicide?
As to the broken VA system today, where PTSD is a disability rating that can earn a veteran not only access to drugs, which, as Stuart Bell implies above, seem to be given out like candy by the VA, known as the “pusher-man” up this way where I am for that reason, but a monthly disability check as well.
Because of the political ramifications of the VA backlog, president Barack Obama essentially made getting a disability rating for PTSD a walk in the park, and a piece of cake.
Show up, tell them you heard a shot fired in anger once, so that now you are feeling agitated and can’t sleep at night, and you need medication, and pretty much, you are in like Flynn, with a disability check in your pocket and access to the VA pharmacy.
And you are therefore happy, which means political pressure is gone.
“Look how well we are caring for America’s veterans!”
Yeah, right!