the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

So I've been mixing it up with some local veterans, one Vietnam era guy comes out to the park most weeks and I've been attending the yoga and Dong style taijiquan classes there.

Tuesday one of the thousands of vets that go to the local clinic took his life.

He had been discharged from a residential program last Friday. Apparently Tuesday he had an appointment with his patient advocate that ended poorly. He was assigned 50% disability but did not have use of his legs.

So he came out of the meeting, said, "guess all I can do is shoot myself" pulled out a pistol and fired a round into his belly. Right there in the waiting room in front of hundreds of other vets.

I don't know who this post is for, but if you visit your local VA regularly you expect some changes to security protocols in the coming year.

And as it turns out, there were two more suicides at VA facilities over the weekend. I guess it's a popular place to do it. They leave notes sometimes saying they came there because they know the VA will take care of them.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/201 ... ities.html

Damn I meant to put this in off the topic. Sorry. Mods, can you move it, please.

OI,

I am so sorry to hear that. If you serve long enough you end up hearing about friends who eventually took their lives.

Best,

Peacedog

Sorry to hear. Yes, PTSD is also a big problem for the wounds you can't see and then you have people with wounds you can see.

In my experience veterans are among the most patriotic of Americans and I believe many live with the pain of having experienced war and even worse the pain of having to return to civilian life and being basically ignored by those who sent you off to war. I am not singling out any one political party but seems that we as a whole have little issue with sending people off to war but it seems that we expect these same people to readjust back to civilian life on their own.

I will pick one man and that one is in the White House because he once suggested that people with PTSD are perhaps too weak for the military meanwhile he himself dodged the draft. As much as I can't stand the man I also know many things he says and does represents the beliefs of a lot of Americans so it shouldn't be a surprise that many vets take their own lives rather than live a life of misery. I think these same vets probably accepted death long ago. But the way he treated McCain like trash is how many of these people feel when they can't get any help.

Stigmatization is a big problem. There was a time when veterans complained of what is called PTSD but they were looked upon as making things up because the military refused to acknowledge the problem and to take it seriously.
Now they are starting to see it as a problem. Social support is important from all sides and not just the therapy but then they go home and have to navigate the problems there. I have seen enough stories of functional veterans with PTSD but when the triggers of everyday life happen, they just react, sadly it takes lives, and their own.