Can we talk about veteran suicide?

Something has got to be done to take better care of the people who protect our freedom.

Last week, a young girl lost her mom to suicide.

I don’t know the young girl, nor do I know her mother; and I don’t know the exact details and circumstances around her mother’s passing. But I do know the thoughts and feelings that make a person think they’d be better off — and their loved ones would be better off — if they were to take their own life.

The girl’s mother was a veteran. In the veteran community, suicidal thoughts and tendencies run rampant.

Most of the veterans I know have experienced what psychologists call “intrusive thoughts,” or suicidal ideation. The ones I speak to on a regular basis have almost all had moments (and I include myself in here) where we’ve thought about ending our own life, and about whether that would ease our own suffering.

There are statistics, and news reports, and stories about the suicide rate among U.S. veterans, and the numbers are staggering.

I think, sometimes, it’s so alarming that we don’t know how to respond… and so as a nation, we try to just gloss over the fact that so many of our brave men and women are struggling. The numbers are so high, we don’t know what to do to bring them back down again.

So we do nothing. We express our remorse (which is good, and something we should continue doing), but then we go back to our own lives.

I don’t know; maybe we’re hoping somebody else will find a solution? Or maybe it’s just such an uncomfortable topic, we really don’t know what more we can do?

I understand that response. Within the veteran community, I think when an individual is facing something of this magnitude, our default is to assume the problem is unsolvable, and for better or for worse, when we think we can’t solve a problem, we don’t ask for help, we don’t seek other people’s opinions, we don’t recognize that there even is a solution; we just shut down and accept that the problem is never going away.

There are outliers… those chosen few who defy the odds and rise above their challenges… but if I’m honest, I think most veterans (unless we get help) feel so beat down by life, and by our experiences in the military, we tend to expect that most of our challenges will never go away.

And we kind of numb ourselves to that way of thinking, as much as possible. We tune out a lot of stuff that we really should be talking about in therapy, and with our families and friends, because we don’t want to be a burden.

We hear the stories, and statistics, and we know how hard it is for veterans to get real help — and we just dissociate from it all. We imagine it’s happening to somebody else… to people we don’t know… and anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it, and it’s not our responsibility.

And it’s true: I don’t know the woman who left behind a daughter who now will grow up without her mom. I wasn’t in her circle of friends. I don’t think we served in the same branch, or at the same time. If I hadn’t read about her suicide, I wouldn’t know it ever happened.

But as a veteran, I share a bond with her, and with every other man and woman who’s taken their own life because they couldn’t see any other way. I have an obligation to do something to make a difference.

Not to mention, it breaks my heart that her little girl now has to navigate life alone.

This should not be happening.

America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. It’s the birthplace of freedom! We enjoy our freedom because of the sacrifices our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines make on the battlefield.

We should be making sacrifices at home, to make sure they get the help they need when the battle is over.

We shouldn’t be seeing such high rates of suicide among our nation’s heroes. One is too many. I don’t know what we can do — what I can do — to turn that number around… but I feel like we have to start doing something.

No little girl should have to endure losing her mom to suicide.