The following is a Video report from CBS as a Lead In to a Report, now online but to be printed in tomorrows Washington Post from Dana Priest.
A Soldier’s Cry For Help – CBS News Video
This is the Washington Post report:
Suicide Try Spotlights a Trend
Soldier facing charges for trying to kill herself last year attempts suicide again, one of a record number who have tried or succeeded in ending their lives after serving in Iraq, Afghanistan.
Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside’s story is emblematic of the military’s ambivalence when it comes to soldiers who need mental health care.
13 comments
Skip to comment form
… and what has been done to her.
2,000 suicides – add that to the almost 4,000 casualties.
All those families.
Thanks for posting this year, jim — I’ll make sure to read the WaPo story tomorrow.
for how well you keep track of our troop’s mental health issues throughout the press. It’s very stressful for me as a spouse watching them fall apart like they are and it’s stressful watching them not get the care they all need and they all deserve. You know why so many go untended because you went through this before. To tend to them is to begin to have to document them and that leads to being able to add figures up and produce statistics……and that of all things will lead everyone back to where we started and to the place where war is always our very last resort when all else has failed and we are in real jeopardy. Then we must face the abyss that Iraq was not a last resort but an act of overt aggression and how we have let the nation of Afghanistan down completely and our own country as well. How sad that when the press discovers certain situations those situations evaporate and reality begins to occur. How sad though that a father must violate his daughter’s life privacy in order to protect her and save her from her own nation and her peers and superiors! Another infuriation!
I just saw this recent diary posted at dkos: Record Number of Army Suicides.
I may add some of this content to my blog. This message needs to get out.
When I was in the service a person I served with who needed mental health care was threatened with punishment. He committed suicide. You won’t see his name on the Vietnam Memorial, but he served there and died before he returned home.
troops and veterans by the government, the VA and the DOD needs to known by ALL in our nation. This is one tragic story of thousands in a multitude of areas. Mental health issues seem to be the biggest single problem but many other unfair and difficult issues confront our military men and women.