by John Henry Parker | Apr 5, 2022 | In The News
Wake Up, America We are about to cross a catastrophic milestone in our nation’s history… and nobody knows it. The latest U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) report from the DEFENSE CASUALTY ANALYSIS SYSTEM puts the number of U.S. military killed in action (KIA) while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan at 6,567 as of December 14, 2012. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are not correlating the lives lost in The War On Terror with the catastrophic loss of life occurring when warriors come home. In the United States, every 80 minutes a U.S. Military Veteran who actually made it home alive from Afghanistan and Iraq dies from suicide. That’s 18 per day, 6,570 per year. Skeptical of this statistic? Here’s a Policy Brief titled: Losing the Battle, The Challenge of Military Suicide from the Center for a New American Security. If this trend continues there will be more Post 911 Veteran Suicides on the near horizon than are names on the Vietnam Wall (58,261), do the math. Herein lies a big “Catch 22” that is a part of the homecoming dilemma Veterans and their families are faced with. Problem: The Preparedness and Decompression Dilemma When service members leave the military and become veterans they are no longer employees under the care of the Department of Defense. Upon separation from military service, all health care and mental health services transfer from the DOD to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). DOD out-processing ends and the VA in-processing begins. Unfortunately, by the time Veterans who need help the most arrive home, for many, an opportunity to most effectively help them...
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