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I salute that Marine for his dedication to that cause, but I got a little pissed off reading some of the comments at the website, which were shameful.

I think the issue of veteran suicide is a real issue, as is mental health in general among combat veterans, but some of the people at that linked Fox article clearly saw it as a way to bash the military.

But it did get me to thinking on the subject.

I just did some searches on “How much higher is veteran suicide rate than the general population?” and the first one at the top of the list was a study from 2013 that said that the veteran rate was 30 per 100K, while the civilian rate was 14 per 100K.

Then I saw another study where they broke out and didn’t count veterans who were in the National Guard and Reservists who were never activated as well as Active Duty. (I can see the point of removing National Guard and Reservists who were never activated, and I would think Active Duty suicides is something that should be studied in its own category.

I mean, heck-I am considered a veteran, and if I were to commit suicide, that suicide would be included in those statistics, but I don’t think someone like me should be. (Not thinking of it, just using myself as an example)

The VA did a study removing those categories, and it found that a veteran who wasn’t active duty, was never in called up National Guard, or activated reserves, and they got a value of 17 per 100K, which is 1.3% higher than the civilian statistics.

What I had a gut feeling on is the first and most often quoted 2013 study was too broad in my opinion, and given the all the references to it in that one search, is obviously a “watermark” study to a lot of people, and some of those people are clearly not looking for the truth, they are looking for a club to hit someone over the head with.

Also, I tend to play down to a degree the VA study, simply because I assume they had an interest in getting those numbers down, though the argument may be made they could have an interest in having the higher numbers too, for budgetary reasons or whatever.

I think breaking out active duty and even a category of active duty deployed to combat zones and studying them on their own makes a lot more sense to me, I don’t know if anyone has done that. I feel that should be dealt with separately.

I liken it to my view of the COVID-19 related issues. They have taken a “one size fits all” approach instead of a multilayered approach that treats people in different categories differently, which seems to make more sense to me. Why should we treat a 14 year old child who may get the virus (and has a vanishingly small likelihood of encountering serious issues) the same as a 82 year old with co-morbidity factors who is far more likely to suffer serious complications? We lock everyone up, destroy our economy, and do real damage to everyone when a stratified approach to risk management makes more sense.

The overall point is, this seems like an issue being talked about as a political tool rather than a real concern for the mental health of people we send into harm’s way. I think we could do better at addressing this, and better defining it and stratifying treatment of it makes more sense to me, and would make better use of the seemingly inadequate money and effort we spend on it.