Veteran college students have highest suicide rates
The Stars & Stripes reports that according to a study quoted in the Air Force Times nearly half of veterans in college have had thoughts of suicide;
Researchers decided to examine the issue of suicide among student veterans because they received reports from campus veterans groups that vets were feeling isolated and disconnected from fellow students as a result of their worldly experiences, said University of Utah professor M. David Rudd, the study’s lead author.
Isolated and disconnected? No shit? Here are people who’ve already made a mark in the world surrounded by lazy, unmotivated complainers who treat them like shit. Not to mention that they are closer in age to the professors than the students and the professors demean everything that the veterans have accomplished.
I think the worst part of my life was the year I spent as a student listening to my fellow students constantly telling me how rough their lives were and listening to professors mis-tell the history I’d lived. And I couldn’t understand how the world had gone to shit in the mere twenty years I’d been gone.
Category: Veterans Issues
No shit! I sat there and argued down a prof about Iraq. Dickhead actually suggested that 9/11 was an inside job.
18-year olds who think their shit doesn’t stink? What a revelation. It’s the professors who should know better, but apparently being a 40-year old who thinks their shit doesn’t stink has advantages in those circles as well.
I’ve been lucky enough to have mostly good profs and the ones that were talking out of their asses were quickly corrected by me and backed down immediately.
I tried college myself. Near 40 years ago… Same, same. A semester long engineering 101 project took two or three of us ‘Nam vets a week or so to solve, etc. One good thing about my college experience is that I met my wife there.
As for thoughts of suicide; I question the sanity of anyone who HASN’T had a suicidal thought. I don’t mean dwelling on it! A spurned lover, an out of work person, and even a rainy day can trigger such thoughts in some. Seems like a flawed unit of measure.
I do hope I don’t sound dismissive concerning the REAL issue?
A survey of 525 student veterans, 98 percent of whom had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, with an average age of 26, showed that 46 percent contemplated suicide, 20 percent had planned a suicide and 7.7 percent had tried to kill themselves.
That 7.7% number vs the 46% number is what I am referring to. A single vet who succeeds is one too many.
Spot on, Zero. NOW, how do we go about identifying and helping these?
PS: I have a few here I’ve intervened with, one was lost to an off duty city cop that drilled him C/M in a parts store parking lot because of….
Street #5: There it is. We had ‘rap groups’ back in the day. We felt some personal responsibility. I have no idea if that sort of thing exists on any campus?
It wasn’t any easier in the early 70’s when I was enrolled in ROTC. Later, after active duty, I went back to college and ran into the same crap. It was so damned frustrating, listening to all these narcissistic KIDS and their equally patronizing instructors.
I would love to be able to eliminate government-backed student loans and grants, and to end tenure.
The sad truth is that they don’t know about us, even though we would MORE than happy to help them get through their problems. When I went through college, and law school (80 thru 88), there was nobody, and I’d never seen combat. We would BE there for them, if they only knew. The Judge I clerked for in the (then-named) Court of Military Appeals was a Vietnam MACV Ranger-qualified veteran (Judge Eugene R. Sullivan), who hired me because I was an almost-similarly-qualified vet, was a God-send. Everybody in the CMA was a veteran. It was an extremely comfortable “fit,” and we hired only OTHER military veterans, because only we knew, or could understand, what they did. It was the BEST part of my life as a government bureaucrat. I still serve in the USG, but I don’t enjoy it, because too many LOSERS/pretenders have infiltrated it.
Jonn, send me the info about USMC Paul M. O’Brien. He keeps claiming he was a Marine, but all the info I have is that he declined a commission after PLC in about the 80’s.
Oh, good! My previous attempt to post didn’t quite make it! It’s late, and I’ve been drinking!
Here’s what I said, it’s a shame that they don’t know about us. When I went to college, after the Army (80 to 85), and law school (85 to 88), there wasn’t anybody there to help “us.” But I found other veterans (a Coast Guardsman, believe it or not), to be friends with. And I clerked for a U.S. Court of Military Appeals (as it was then-named) Judge (Eugene R. Sullivan, a Vietnam MACV Ranger-qualified veteran)hired me to clerk for him. And after becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney in D.C., I found other veterans to talk to. I’m now in main Department of Justice, but I still found other vets. We are “out there,” but we need to know WHO the people-in-need are. My son-in-law is a Navy vet, and I give him advice, and he seems to appreciate it.
For anyone who feels “lost,” tell us! We’ll do whatever we can to help you through. If we can’t, we’ll try to find someone who can.
Oh, my previous post DID make it! Nothing I’m ashamed of there, except occasional dropped-words! I need to drink more beer so that I’m completely incoherent!
The only thing that made me want to kill myself was the perpetual stream of BS that would come out of some of my professor’s mouths – especially the sociology classes – what a bunch of BS they are!
I actually had a history professor try to say that after Vietnam “50,000 US soldiers committed suicide because of the horrors they saw over there.” When I asked where he got his numbers he hemmed and hawed around the subject until i finally said “So you made them up is that it?”
Somehow I still got a passing grade. Guess he didn’t want me back to make the class up.
@ #10 – “For anyone who feels “lost,” tell us! We’ll do whatever we can to help you through. If we can’t, we’ll try to find someone who can.” Hell yea!
@ #12 – Been there, done that! Last “professor” I encountered back tracked like a mother bear on his statements when I confronted him during class. LOL! Well done!
“Here are people who’ve already made a mark in the world surrounded by lazy, unmotivated complainers who treat them like shit. Not to mention that they are closer in age to the professors than the students and the professors demean everything that the veterans have accomplished.”
In a nutshell, yes.
I left the Army after one (short) tour in Iraq at the beginning of the conflict. Came home and went to college on the GI Bill. Graduated in ’08.
And what you just described was my experience. To a tee.
But I still didn’t want to kill myself. Just wanted to live among people who aren’t dipshits, that’s all. Blowing my brains out was not my inclination.
Ben: I guess the hardest part for me was the constant revisionist history that was/is being taught. It’s almost a given that any of the courses revolving around the Vietnam era seem to be based upon “Apocalypse Now”, “Platoon leader” and “Full Metal Jacket”, etc.
The constant meme that these United States “Lost the war” in Vietnam could be written in solid granite and placed over the doors of every college history course, as it’s so pervasive in that genre.
There are also a huge number of professors just mailing it in: having their assistants do the daily teaching/indoctrination, and grading on attendance & form rather than substance. For example, and this was the norm for my college experience, a WWI course required a lengthy paper. I stood and watched my professor pick up my paper. He literally placed a template over the front page to see that the title, margins, etc, were where he expected them to be, then flipped through the paper to see that I had footnotes and a bibliography. He didn’t read a damned word of it, but gave me an “A” nonetheless.
I could go on, but you get the drift. College for me was incredibly frustrating because of all the leftist slant and half-truths and outright lies being passed off as “facts”. One professor actually stated that it wasn’t what was demonstrably true about American history, it wasn’t what facts told us. Rather, it was what people believed to be true that was important, and it was HIS job to see that the people got the CORRECT beliefs about American History.
V/R
Older students generally are 25% more likely to get to the point of extreme depression and the point of suicide. My decade long experience looking for a way out was not due to depression per se but to an overwhelming sadness.
I used to think it was “the war”. But now I don’t know. I know for sure my bullshit meter was pegged for the longest time after I got out in ’66. Nothing made sense. It was like I was on another planet, like earth only different. Just could not relate to anything or anyone in college or on the job. And growling and hard looks tend to put the big boot on your prospects.
Finally at the lowest point I sought professional help. I went to “group” with other vets. Holy molley, were they fucked up. I sucked it up after that. Marched on, stopped taking myself so seriouly and got on with life. I still “beep” but it no longer keeps me awake.
Taking sociology in my mid thirties was like chewing aluminum foil and I dreaded going to class. I asked the Prof one day if the course title was “Sociology” or “Socialism” 101. Thankfully, I had strong family support and most of my Profs were decent enough folks so the only violence I ever really contemplated was towards a few disruptive dumb asses in one of my math classes. In the middle of class I pulled the ringleader of these losers into the hall and told him I didn’t know who was paying for his classes, but I was paying for mine, and if he continued to disrupt the class I was going to rip his head off and shit down his neck. Strangely, the disruptions pretty much stopped from that moment on. Once I got into the Nursing program I was too damn busy to be depressed.