Suicide among US veterans 22 per day, 3 times national rate: Report

I thought I would post this article not so much to discuss the alarming suicide rate, but to hopefully reach out to those who may be or may know soldiers in the US military. While many have joined believing that they are serving their country, truth is they are serving the so called ELITE, BIG BUSINESS and BANKERS. Killing of INNOCENT people for the sake of stealing another nation's resources is not a FORGIVABLE/REDEEMABLE/HONORABLE act no matter how it is manipulated to seem so.

As it stands right now america and Europe have attacked numerous Middle Eastern nations, Asian nations and now African nations all for the sake of Gold, Oil and Drugs. Not only are these soldiers being made to do what I am sure some of them find UNCONSCIONABLE, but also to do repeated tours only to experience the demoralizing event over and over until psychological breakdown ensues. Just as people come together in order to have a greater impact on an issue they are presenting to their local/state or Federal government, these soldiers must come together and make a stance that they will NOT fight for Bankers, Big Business or the Elite. Failing to come to a common decision will only perpetuate this madness and ensure continued suicides, continued psychological issues and death...all the while the businesses, bankers and elite reap windfalls of profit and control.

While JUST SAYING NO, may seem an impossible endeavor for a single individual, as a group it IS POSSIBLE and will have a massive impact. As it stands these soldiers are no more than the STRONGARM of the Elite, bankers and big business who are nothing more than aging POWERLESS men who are having their way and living vicariously through these soldiers, who when once these POWERLESS men have accomplished their will with them, will throw them away/aside like used tissue, with no regard for their lives/health/existence.

Today is February 1st 2013 it is the day and the beginning of these soldiers deciding on taking a stance as a TEAM. A stance before the rest of the world, which hopefully when it sees, will too say ENOUGH......

A new study finds that 22 US war veterans commit suicide everyday.

Fri Feb 1, 2013 10:50AM GMT

A new official US study says that nearly 22 war veterans of the country commit suicide per day, an estimate that is almost 20 percent higher than the 2007 rate suggested by government’s Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).

The two-year study, performed by a VA researcher, further suggests that two-thirds of the veterans who kill themselves are 50 year old or older, indicating that the surge in the suicide rate among US veterans is not chiefly shaped by soldiers that recently fought in the US-led war in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Washington Post reports on Friday.

“The rate is going up in the country, and veterans are a part of it,” said VA epidemiologist Robert Bossarte, who conducted the study, further showing that the overall number of suicides in the United States climbed by about 11 percent between 2007 and 2010.

According to the study’s data, the suicide rate among US veterans is nearly three times the overall national average but an identical percentage of male veterans in their 50’s commit suicide as do non-veteran men in the same age group.

Bossearte further added that men in their 50s, which consists of a considerable percentage of the American war veteran population, have been “especially hard-hit” by the national surge in suicide rate.

The VA researcher, according to the report, reiterated that a great deal of work needs to be done to better understand the data, especially those that concern the persisting suicide risk among veterans of recent US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although they represent a minority of the overall American veteran population, recent studies have indicated that those who fought in recent US wars overseas are 30 percent to 200 percent more likely to commit suicide than their non-veteran peers.

To determine the suicide rate among US veterans, Bossarte and his lone assistant “spent more than two years, starting in October 2010, cajoling state governments to turn over death certificates for the more than 400,000 Americans who have killed themselves since 1999,” the report says, adding that the study is based on information obtained from 21 of 42 states that agreed to provide data to the VA researcher.

The study, according to the report, follows long-standing criticism that the governments Veterans Affairs Department has “moved far too slowly even to figure out how many veterans kill themselves.”

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