{"id":64689,"date":"2016-08-16T21:03:07","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T21:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2016\/08\/16\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:46:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T12:46:02","slug":"why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/opinion\/2016\/08\/16\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why veterans die by suicide, and how to stop it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Try to picture a veteran who has recently chosen to take his own life, and you&#8217;ll probably think of someone like me: a 20-to-30-something<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><a data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/the-life-and-death-of-clay-hunt\/\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/the-life-and-death-of-clay-hunt\/\" title=\"Link: http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/the-life-and-death-of-clay-hunt\/\">man who served in Iraq or Afghanistan<\/a>. That&#8217;s a result of countless hours spent by advocates to raise awareness about the issue.<br\/><br\/>In 2014, as a volunteer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, I spent most of my free time advocating for the<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><a data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.rollcall.com\/news\/home\/veterans-march-on-capitol-hill-fo-suicide-prevention-bill\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rollcall.com\/news\/home\/veterans-march-on-capitol-hill-fo-suicide-prevention-bill\">Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Act<\/a>. I spent the summer traveling the country telling Clay&#8217;s story to everyone who would listen in hopes of building a movement that would get Congress to finally take decisive action to address the suicide crisis in the veteran community.<br\/><br\/>I had never met Clay when he was alive, but thanks to my experience with IAVA, I now know Clay&#8217;s parents, Susan and Richard Selke. We don&#8217;t talk regularly or see each other much since the Clay Hunt bill was<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><a data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/taskandpurpose.com\/skyline\/clay-hunt-suicide-prevention-act-unanimously-passes-senate-vote\/\" href=\"http:\/\/taskandpurpose.com\/skyline\/clay-hunt-suicide-prevention-act-unanimously-passes-senate-vote\/\">signed into law in early 2015<\/a>, but I feel like I&#8217;ve got a unique sort of bond with them. It&#8217;s a bond that I&#8217;ve felt with lots of parents who have lost their son or daughter to suicide.<br\/><br\/>That bond exists because they see in me what they lost, and I see in them what I almost did to my own parents.<br\/><br\/>On my way into Baghdad from Kuwait in early 2005, I was a private first class with just about 12 months in the Army. Our Bradley fire support team vehicle was strapped on top of a civilian 18-wheeler in order to preserve fuel as part of a gigantic convoy, and I traded my gunner seat for the Bradley commander&#8217;s spot so that I could hang outside the turret and soak in all the sights.<br\/><br\/>Little did I know, an insurgent had placed an IED on a road sign that was suspended above the road. I chose just the right time, for no particular reason, to hop down into the turret and clamshell the hatch above me. When the bomb went off, I didn&#8217;t even know what happened for a few seconds. Between the relatively small size of the bomb and the Bradley&#8217;s armor, I was fine. But I spent the next year thinking about how I could die at any moment.<br\/><br\/>When I returned home from Iraq at the end of 2005, I felt like anything but a hero. Save for a few random close calls, I had been relatively safe.<br\/><br\/>Still, in May 2007, I walked out onto Warrior&#8217;s Walk, a field at Fort Stewart, Georgia, where they plant a tree for every Dogface Soldier who has fallen in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like a lot of memorial sites, it feels a bit like a graveyard. There I chased a fist full of Percocet with a bottle of vodka, with intent to die among my fallen brothers.<br\/><br\/>Parents like Clay&#8217;s don&#8217;t always ask me, &#8220;Why did you try to kill yourself?&#8221; but I can see it in the way that they look at me that they want to know.<br\/><br\/>They want to understand why they lost their own son or daughter.<br\/><br\/>In order to address the problem that is suicide in our community, the answer to this question is vitally important \u2014 and unfortunately, the<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><a data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalhealth.va.gov\/docs\/2016suicidedatareport.pdf\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mentalhealth.va.gov\/docs\/2016suicidedatareport.pdf\" title=\"Link: http:\/\/www.mentalhealth.va.gov\/docs\/2016suicidedatareport.pdf\">Department of Veterans Affairs&#8217; new suicide data report<\/a><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>doesn&#8217;t provide us the answer.<br\/><br\/>On a personal level, answering, &#8220;Why&#8217;d you try to kill yourself?&#8221; is incredibly frustrating. There was a lot going on at the time of my suicide attempt. I had been suffering from severe bouts of depression, frightening panic attacks, and paralyzing migraines \u2014 what I now understand to be the effects of severe post-traumatic stress disorder.<br\/><br\/>What made things worse before my suicide attempt is that when I asked for help, I was treated with suspicion by my Army doctors and later chastised by my company commander for taking the antidepressants that I had been prescribed.<br\/><br\/>Despite an otherwise stellar career, I felt like I had failed as a soldier and as a man. My personal relationships were a mess. My unit went downrange without me so that I could get some emergency surgery, and I spent the next month restricted to my quarters. In that time, I quit going to therapy, and I stayed home in a dark room watching the 2007 presidential primary debates, where my buddies in Iraq seemed to have been forgotten, and I was drinking myself to sleep most nights.<br\/><br\/>So, why did I decide suicide was the only way out?<br\/><br\/>It wasn&#8217;t the nightmares about discovering a mass grave in Iraq, or waking up from vivid dreams not knowing which of my friends were alive and which were dead. It wasn&#8217;t the fear of going back to the sandbox for another tour that made me want to end my life.<br\/><br\/>At the age of 21, almost every bit of experience that I had as an adult was at war, or training for it. Outside of my limited, and what was then, miserable world, I didn&#8217;t think there was any chance of things getting better. There was no one thing, one event, one person to blame.<br\/><br\/>It was a last resort, a last way to exert control over a life that otherwise felt like complete and total chaos.<br\/><br\/>And thankfully, I woke up from that drug-induced brush with death after a battle buddy found my limp body.<br\/><br\/>Years later, I&#8217;ve figured out that the common theme among veterans who choose suicide is as<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><a data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.hup.harvard.edu\/catalog.php?isbn=9780674025493&amp;content=reviews\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hup.harvard.edu\/catalog.php?isbn=9780674025493&amp;content=reviews\">Dr. Thomas Joiner says<\/a>, an overall sense of hopelessness combined with severe mental anguish \u2014 a feeling that we&#8217;ve lost control of our own lives, and there&#8217;s not one thing that we can do to get back on the path.<br\/><br\/>The VA&#8217;s latest report confirmed what we already believed to be true: The highest rate of veteran suicide falls on those aged 19\u201329. In terms of raw numbers, it&#8217;s the Vietnam veterans&#8217; generation who are dying in droves. But the biggest takeaway from the report is that 14 of the 20 veterans who die each day aren&#8217;t enrolled at the VA. The increase in suicide rates for veterans outside the VA healthcare system has grown almost five times faster than those getting care at VA.<br\/><br\/>There are a lot of questions the VA still doesn&#8217;t have answers to. As a survivor, it&#8217;s my duty to try to fill the gaps so that we can continue to look out for one another, beyond our own units, and beyond our own generation.<br\/><br\/>For all of its flaws, it&#8217;s the VA that&#8217;s provided me the care that pulled me out of that dark place the war pushed me into. It&#8217;s usually not the success stories that make the headlines \u2014 but the VA saves lives.<br\/><br\/>When politicians bash the VA as if it&#8217;s worthless, they&#8217;re feeding the hopelessness of vulnerable veterans by discouraging them to reach out for care in a system that works. I&#8217;m not saying we shouldn&#8217;t hold the VA accountable or try to fix its problems \u2014 but we need to be responsible about it about who we&#8217;re blaming and for what.<br\/><br\/><em>Kristofer Goldsmith deployed as a forward observer with the Army&#8217;s Third Infantry Division. He is now the assistant director for policy and government at Vietnam Veterans of America and a member of the Defense Council at the Truman National Security Project.<\/em><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><br\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Try to picture a veteran who has recently chosen to take his own life, and you\u2019ll probably think of someone like me: a 20-to-30-something man who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. That\u2019s a result of countless hours spent by advocates to raise awareness about the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":62589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2187],"class_list":["post-64689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"NT7FCVZOPZEAJHAXE4H7PBKGIM","arc_canonical_url":"\/opinion\/2016\/08\/16\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why veterans die by suicide, and how to stop it - Navy Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Try to picture a veteran who has recently chosen to take his own life, and you\u2019ll probably think of someone like me: a 20-to-30-something man who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. That\u2019s a result of countless hours spent by advocates to raise awareness about the issue.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/opinion\/2016\/08\/16\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why veterans die by suicide, and how to stop it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Try to picture a veteran who has recently chosen to take his own life, and you\u2019ll probably think of someone like me: a 20-to-30-something man who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. That\u2019s a result of countless hours spent by advocates to raise awareness about the issue.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/opinion\/2016\/08\/16\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Navy Times\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-08-16T21:03:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-08T12:46:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kristofer Goldsmith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kristofer Goldsmith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\n\t    \"@context\": \"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\n\t    \"@graph\": [\n\t        {\n\t            \"@type\": \"Article\",\n\t            \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/#article\",\n\t            \"isPartOf\": {\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"author\": {\n\t                \"name\": \"migration\",\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/cc76c831bb37a926738c8391fca7a3b1\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"headline\": \"Why veterans die by suicide, and how to stop it\",\n\t            \"datePublished\": \"2016-08-16T21:03:07+00:00\",\n\t            \"dateModified\": \"2026-08-08T12:46:02+00:00\",\n\t            \"mainEntityOfPage\": {\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"wordCount\": 1256,\n\t            \"commentCount\": 0,\n\t            \"publisher\": {\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/#organization\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"image\": {\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/#primaryimage\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"thumbnailUrl\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/flag.jpg.crdownload.jpg\",\n\t            \"articleSection\": [\n\t                \"Opinion\"\n\t            ],\n\t            \"inLanguage\": \"en-US\",\n\t            \"potentialAction\": [\n\t                {\n\t                    \"@type\": \"CommentAction\",\n\t                    \"name\": \"Comment\",\n\t                    \"target\": [\n\t                        \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/#respond\"\n\t                    ]\n\t                }\n\t            ]\n\t        },\n\t        {\n\t            \"@type\": \"WebPage\",\n\t            \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/\",\n\t            \"url\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/\",\n\t            \"name\": \"Why veterans die by suicide, and how to stop it - Navy Times\",\n\t            \"isPartOf\": {\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/#website\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"primaryImageOfPage\": {\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/#primaryimage\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"image\": {\n\t                \"@id\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/navytimes\\\/opinion\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/16\\\/why-veterans-die-by-suicide-and-how-to-stop-it\\\/#primaryimage\"\n\t            },\n\t            \"thumbnailUrl\": \"https:\\\/\\\/one.sightlinemg.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/flag.jpg.crdownload.jpg\",\n\t            \"datePublished\": \"2016-08-16T21:03:07+00:00\",\n\t            \"dateModified\": \"2026-08-08T12:46:02+00:00\",\n\t            \"description\": \"Try to picture a veteran who has recently chosen to take his own life, and you\u2019ll probably think of someone like me: a 20-to-30-something man who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. 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