The recent headline on the Drudge Report screamed, MORE AMERICANS NOW COMMIT SUICIDE THAN DIE IN CAR CRASHES. In a Wall Street Journal opinion article last week, we read about the life of Peter Wielunski, a veteran who, while …
Military Mental Health
The Downer Side of War
War is hell, and one way to deal with it is to drink your troubles away – even if U.S. troops are barred from consuming alcohol in war zones.
But nothing apparently stops many of them once the troops are back home. A new …
Military Mental Health: An Outsider Takes a Peek Inside
Marjorie Morrison is a San Diego psychologist who took time out of her busy private practice to provide “pro-active” mental-health counseling to more than 500 Marines at the recruit depot there. Such counseling removes stigma …
Army Focuses on Reducing Suicides
We’ve just begun the Army’s Suicide Prevention Month – next week marks National Suicide Prevention Week – and the service is cranking up its suicide-prevention efforts:
The Army will expand its observance with events
…
Another Reason to Live in the Sticks
If you’re a U.S. military veteran living in Waco, Texas – not that far away from the Army’s Fort Hood – you’re out of luck. Veterans living there wait an average of 403 days – that’s more than 13 months — for the …
How Cops Can Best Deal With Vets
How should we keep veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and/or hearing loss from getting shot from altercations with police?
Police are increasingly the first responders for responding to …
Crisis Intervention Teams For Vets: Sure Beats Jail
Las Vegas — About 2.5 million troops have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s a lot of people who have seen war up close and personal. It can affect some of them adversely when they come back home. That’s why …
Of “Green-on-Blue” Killings, and Army Suicides
Battleland was invited to be on Friday’s PBS NewsHour, but this invitation had a twist that made it different than all that had come before. Host Jeff Brown and his producer, Dan Sagalyn, wanted a two-fer: first, they wanted to …
This Isn’t Funny…
The Army’s failure to cut down on its suicide rate makes it a target for people without taste. Alas, the July figures due out shortly are unlikely to help.
As someone who has covered military suicides, and the folks waging the …
Trying to Make Sense of the Senseless…
What have I learned from the tragic shooting that took the lives of six Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin on Sunday? It reminded me of who I am.
People wept for the senseless loss of life. Some were afraid to come out of their homes. They complained that their leaders had segregated them and that their pleas for justice had fallen …
Military Extremists: Nothing to Bragg About
Like many others, the question of military service and the mass shooting by Wade Page at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin got me curious.
So I simply Googled “military extremism Ft Bragg.”
A fascinating mélange of …
The Killer…of a Military Suicide Victim
The military’s suicide woes are profound enough without a sailor adding to them. Yet that’s just what Petty Office 2nd Class Paul Bricker did. He helped a superior, Chief Petty Office Gerard Curran, kill himself. Their goal: …
“Sequestration is this crazy-named, nutty process that was put in place in order to force Congress to do the right thing. They put a gun to their head in order to do the right thing. And then when they fail to do the right thing, they're ready to pull the trigger.”