No, instead, with the military…they throw out attempted suicides as soon as the bandages are off their wrists, so if the second try works, they don’t have to count them in their records. And if they wont’ go (like officers) then they court martial them to get rid of them. Treatment? Riiight.

Quick — get Malkin on the job to make sure these service personnel’s families be made to pay back the U.S. government for all the trouble they’ve caused.

So soldiers are committing suicide more now that we have a war-winning surge than back when we were in quagmire mode. Someone really should tell the Versailles-on-the_Hudson folk and repeat this over and over if John “The Surge was my idea” McCain is the nominee.

My dad came home from Vietnam and for the next 20 years he watched as all the guys who got PTSD (worse than him) and Agent Orange poisoning got left behind by the people who were supposed to protect THEM.

Next time you see a “Support Our Troops” magnet on the back of a Crown Vic inform the person that the crazy, scary homeless guy near his office whom he tells to get a job and thinks of derisively while watching Larry Ludlow is probably a vet and owes his crazy problems and his drugs problems to his service.

As a great philosopher once said “It’s a great country, but it’s a straaaaange culture.”

Oh, Brad. Don’t you know that government-run healthcare doesn’t work?
Still, I don’t see corporations lining up to help these poor veterans.
Wow, I just realized how simple the wingnut arguments usually are.

I have a theory about the CogDis the fRight shows towards soldiers. On the one hand they scream Support the Troops at the drop of a Purple Heart Band-Aid. On the other they could give a fuck about Vets. I can only conclude that in the fRightWing Dictionary, “Troops” only applies to soldiers actively engaged in fighting, provided they don’t complain. Once they stop fighting (for whatever reason) they cease to be worthy of support.

Exceptions made for former porn stars who are willing to fluff the pRresident.

Labrys,

thank you for making the point I would have hit.

O’Reilly will be harping on about how this is a Soros financed smear to embarrass fearless leader in 3…2…1…

I agree with the sentiment, Brad but some of us are working to free people from the American mental health system, because it take our episodes too seriously. Walter’s crazy, scary homeless guys are herded into an abusive, disempowering system that treats humans in distress as incomprehensible aliens who must take disabling drugs for “stabilization”, which is shorthand for lifelong “disease management” that has no endpoint, and no hope for recovery. Mental illness is a political issue, it is driven by ideology, and that, IMO is what this country does not take nearly as seriously as we should.

This is all because you Liberals won’t support them! If you had only bought one of those magnets and some of those little flags none of this would have happened.

Don’t help them with counseling or medical treatment or bring them home though. That would be Fascism.

we don’t treat mental health in this country nearly as seriously as we should.

A-fucking-men. And it’s a damn shame that there’s this “they don’t need sissy-ass ‘mental health care’–they’re super-tough-guy soldiers!” sentiment.

Quick — get Malkin on the job to make sure these service personnel’s families be made to pay back the U.S. government for all the trouble they’ve caused.

At this point, it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if she did just that.

the guys who got PTSD (worse than him) and Agent Orange poisoning got left behind by the people who were supposed to protect THEM.

This is my downstairs neighbor. Great guy, but having all sorts of health problems due to Agent Orange exposure that will never go away. He’s proud of his service, but he’s pretty bitter about how the government has treated him since he last fired a rifle for Uncle Sam. I sure as hell would be, too. It’s fucking shameful.

Arky – it’s slightly off topic, but that’s their approach to abortion, too. They care intensely about a fetus only so long as it’s gestating, and once it pops out of mom’s body, it’s on its own.

I think both are reflections of a more general fact: movement conservatives care about something only while it serves a purpose for the movement. Almost every action over the last seven years fits into that paradigm.

Gary “Booger” Saul St. James, O’Reilly, Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc., etc.

” . . . herded into an abusive, disempowering system that treats humans in distress WINGERS as incomprehensible aliens who must take disabling drugs for “stabilization”, which is shorthand for lifelong “disease management” that has no endpoint, and no hope for recovery.”

Sounds like a plan.

Considering how gleefully the Republicans have destroyed our military, we are quite lucky that no foreign powers have decided to take advantage of it. If China bore us ill will, they could put us into a world of hurt right about now, with our forces bogged down in two wars overseas.

Not that I’m say China wants to attack, but running our military through the meat grinder is one of the stupider things that this moronic administration has done. Veritably dromedarian in its camel-ness!

I’m pretty sure we determined quite some time ago that Support the Troops means
Just do what the president says because Daddy’s always right.

Although “The Troops” are our brothers and sisters, Daddy always gets the last say.

This pathology would be comical if it weren’t so destructive.

The fact is, if you’re a crazy person it’s your own goddamn fault and the state shouldn’t subsidize you for it. Why should I be punished for your insanity?

For the Art, gary. Quid pro quo.

[…] With forgotten wars come forgotten soldiers: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began […]

Thanks for posting on an essential issue.

My good friend, Ilona, wrote the book on this and related matters. It’s worth the read.

And, also, she is teh hot.

Veritably dromedarian in its camel-ness!

To be fair to the US, very few places have mental health as a high priority in healthcare.

Thank you for posting this story.
I have a similar post on my own blog (http://i8pixistix.blogspot.com/2008/01/suicide-and-military.html ) , but I know you get far more traffic than I do.
This is a terribly serious issue that needs far more attention than it’s getting.

Gary’s right, he should only be punished for his own evidently superabundant insanity.

But as good Liberal Fascists, we bear Gary’s batshit insanity as if it were our own.

Is it about fairness, His Grace? The World Health Organization did 2 studies showing people with SPMI in undeveloped nations had a higher recovery rate than in the US, which has a captive victim population kept that way in support of established psychiatry and Big Pharma. Talk about unfair…

Right on both counts, about these military personnel, and about mental health care in general.

crazy, scary homeless guys are herded into an abusive, disempowering system that treats humans in distress as incomprehensible aliens who must take disabling drugs for “stabilization”, which is shorthand for lifelong “disease management” that has no endpoint, and no hope for recovery.

As I type, the crazy scary homeless guy who sleeps on a blanket under the trees in front of the parking lot where I park at work, is stable, as he usually is in the morning. Later in the afternoon, he gets up and starts ranting and yelling at passersby. When he gets too agitated, he paces back and forth in front of my office window, shouting racial epithets and profanities. We get used to him, but sometimes he crosses the line, alarmingly, and we call the PD’s homeless liaison number, and they come out and calm him down. He always goes away around 7 p.m, because I think he has a shelter bed.

Also as I write this, Ms. Britney Spears is probably buying a Kit-Kat from a vending machine on the UCLA psycho ward, having been delivered there last night by a virtual motorcade of LAPD officers and EMTs. Or maybe she’s finally sleeping, after spending the last 72 hours awake, buying a $55,000 Mercedes and flashing her body in Rite Aid stores and gas stations. The 40 degree cold spell in LA doesn’t seem to bother her anymore than our parking lot friend.

The mental health situation in this country is horrendous, horrible for patients and families alike, and a solution to it shouldn’t be exploited for partisan reasons.

“Troops” only applies to soldiers actively engaged in fighting, provided they don’t complain. Once they stop fighting (for whatever reason) they cease to be worthy of support.

So what’s new?

The fact is, if you’re a crazy person it’s your own goddamn fault and the state shouldn’t subsidize you for it. Why should I be punished for your insanity?

Gary, what the hell are we doing putting crazy people in our armed forces? Especially when there are perfectly capable people like you available.

How many Tim McVeighs are being (or have already been) created in The Sandbox? Every one of ’em will be on W’s head (and his enablers’).

We as a nation also tend to overlook the mental health of the families of these soldiers. These long and repeated deployments have to be taking their toll on spouses and children. I know that there is some help from MWR, etc., but are there comprehensive mental health services available for them? I doubt it.

And yet your country is a land of milk and honey when it comes to the mental health of its veterans. Our British veterans are treated worse than shit.

Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years.

Curious, that. I suppose that a feeling of worth coming from fulfilling a job that you’ve trained for and serving your country by achieving a positive goal can go a long way to keep people from wanting to kill themselves. A shame, really, that that doesn’t seem to be what the troops are bringing home from Iraq.

Oh, and yes, Gary, it’s all their fault. Every single person suffering from mental illness got like that on purpose, as a way to steal your tax dollars and live in a mansion. Perhaps, rather than the dribs and drabs holding action we’ve been fighting against mental illness, you could suggest a Final Solution?

Why should I be punished for your insanity?
Gary, Irony on line 1.

The fact is, if you’re a crazy person it’s your own goddamn fault and the state shouldn’t subsidize you for it. Why should I be punished for your insanity?

Of course, the history of the mental health industry started in part by states incarcerating crazy people to prevent them from bothering other people or property. There wasn’t much thought to helping them get better, just keeping those crazy folks away from us normal folks.

You’d think Gary would at least feel that was worth his hard-earned tax dollars, but apparently not.

Karma for Gary would be suffering all the ills he disapproves of others for suffering. Illness in his family, mental and physical; home foreclosure, unemployment, discrimination in the workplace; having the government take his property and finally, the best for last, Gary could be mis-identified as an enemy combatant and incarcerated without benefit of due process!

Hey, what about all the wingnuts committing political suicide? Doesn’t anyone care about them? Talk about a group let down by the psychiatric establishment…

Mental damage. Damage is easy to ignore if you don’t have to get a prosthetic for it.

we don’t treat mental health in this country nearly as seriously as we should.

Two words. Christian nation.

(Speaking as a former conservative Christian, most people have no idea how true this is)

Anyway, couldn’t help but think of this song.

Why should the military treat vets any different than say, Nissan? When a worker becomes a medical liability because of repetitive stress injuries, they are let go. The current administration is treating their “workers” the same way. Can’t pony up to the production line, we’ll get someone else who can. Whether vets or workers, we are pretty much disposable to these folks.

Robert M, I should have just said the Vari-Con’s cease to care once an individual needs care. Brought to you by the TalEvangical idea that bad things only happen to bad people.

Legs blown off? Your fault.
Parents too poor to feed you? Your (and their) fault.

Not that a lack of empathy is a symptom of the more alarming entries in the DSM or nuthin’.

I guess you guys never read the enough details.

You see, the conservative war shout is something along the lines of:

“Support the troops!*”

*Guarantee void in case of end of service, injury, voting democrat or speaking against the war. Individual results may vary. Support is on-financial,non-binding. spiritual kind.

I guess they also should have something about side effects, but that would not sell well.

I always found US treatment of war vets wierd. The town I lived in had two out of the three high schools named after the local guys who died in Vietnam. The third guy who survived was sitting under a bridge, near shopping area with a sign saying “need money for food.”

Some irony, eh.

At least the Department of Veterans Affairs will help them fill in their applications for their disability entitlements…
Or maybe not.

Duros,

Beyond the why of we in the comments here suffering, why should the troops be punished with a perpetual war for Gary(and his ilk)’s insanity?

Twofer irony. Sweet.

we don’t treat mental health in this country.

Fixed. Sadly, to our eternal and undying shame. Fergodssakes, we’ve known about combat-related mental illness for almost a hundred years, you’d have thought someone might do something by now, given that the official line is that these ‘brave boys’ are protecting us from the Evul Fill-in-the-blank Horde.

Spirula, good one. I always think about this song. It came out in the early 80s, from a fairly popular bush band called Redgum (they did a lot of eco-conscious stuff, politically conscious stuff, and had a very rural Aussie sound). The song was actually at least partially responsible for changing public opinions, and government respose, to Vietnam vets. It’s chilling and heart-breaking, particularly the still photos near the end, the and it still makes me cry.

We had a guy who hung around the uni when I was there. We called him Two Bombs, because he went around grabbing people and shouting “Why two bombs?” He was huge, a shambling bear of a guy, and quite scary, and grabbed a very thin friend of mine one day. David replied “Well, it kept the Russians out of Manchuria” and managed to twist free and run like the clappers before Two Bombs tore him apart, but aside from shaky relief laughter it wasn’t at all funny. I used to have nightmares wondering what could do that to a man. And I was damn sure that, whatever it was, no-one had any right to do that even to the worst human alive.

But then I’ve always been a DFH.