White House sends condolence letters to suicide NOK
Tman sends us a link to a Stars & Stripes article which announces that the White House has begun sending condolence letters to military suicide next-of-kin after being prodded by Senators Boxer and Burr, the chairs of the Senate Military Family Caucus.
Previously, the White House would send presidential condolences to the families of those who died either in combat or as a result of noncombat incidents in a war zone. Condolence letters were not sent to the families of those who commit suicide, either at home or at war. A White House official said Tuesday the new policy was adopted this week.
Yeah, OK, good, but this is a bandaid to make voters feel better about voting for the President. If they really wanted to do something about it, the White House would do something about preventing suicides in the first place.
Parachute Cutie/Tankerbabe credits me with saving a young soldier from committing suicide. I don’t know if that’s true or not because all I did was talk to him comparing our experiences and saying the same things to him that COB6 told me after our war. Do I think the White House should pay me for that? No, but they need to provide more veterans the opportunity to talk to soldiers who are at risk.
I think this is the idea behind this video that Medal of Honor awardees made last year;
But, I think there needs to be a direct channel from veterans to at-risk soldiers and only the White House and the DVA can provide that channel. I’m sure there are thousands of us who would volunteer our time and experience if it meant saving a few lives, but the resources spent on letters to grieving families could be spent on bringing the real experience to bear on the problem.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Veteran Health Care, Veterans Issues
This brings up something else the Army is doing for suicides. We had 2 down range on my last tour and they decided to hold a ceremony for them. What do people here think about that? We attended more so for the rest of the guys in their units as opposed to the two suicides. Neither had deployed before and neither had seen combat. Both incidents were tied to things that happned back home. The reasoning about the ceremonies and I guess the above mentioned letters is that its all tied to combat in one way or another.
Ceremony isn’t for the dead. Letters to the NOK is a nice gesture, but if they’re signed by an ironhand?
We had a cook kill himself in Iraq. I didn’t know him, but that single selfish act left behind a fatherless kid and haunted those around him. Our Chaplain was a real stud, both physically and spiritually, and I believe he won the Iron Eagle competition at least once. A few years later I learned through my Regimental Chaplain that his counterpart (my former battalion Chaplain) had suffered severe PTSD as a result of being in the room when the kid shot himself and had been hospitalized due to it.
Suicide prevention is a serious issue, and the Army needs to do more than annual training via Powerpoint.
[…] friends at “This Aint Hell” have a good post up today. You should read it (and follow that blog, too!). There is a video […]
Thanks, Jonn, for this post. I took the liberty of linking to it with my blog.
The brother of a good friend of mine came back from Vietnam, and killed himself. I can still remember the shock of that event today. Had another very close friend try to kill himself, but survived. Both weren’t related to their service directly, but to other events in their lives. But, it’s real and I’m happy to see the attempts being made to remove the stigma from folks who seek help.