Veterans Affairs has designated today as Veteran Suicide Prevention Awareness Day. The press release takes a positive point of view:

"Although the prevalence of suicide is no greater in veterans than in the overall population, there are several issues that raise the risk of suicide in veterans."

Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Oh, and bullshit, too.

Read Newsweek's latest cover story, about the way this country--and specifically Veterans Affairs--fails our injured soldiers from the Iraq war, and you won't be feeling so optimistic. It's appalling and shocking. I was overwhelmed by disgust and horror after reading it. I know that all sounds like hyperbole, but it's true.

Just to give you a sense of what I'm talking about, please read the following excerpt, about the total failure of the VA mental health system to deal with Jonathan Schulze, an Iraq vet who won two Purple Hearts and suffered from overwhelming PTSD. It would mean a lot to me if you did, seriously. You won't believe this:

After returning from Iraq in late 2005, Jonathan Schulze spent every day struggling not to fall apart. When a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic turned him away last month, he lost the battle. The 25-year-old Marine from Stewart, Minn., had told his parents that 16 men in his unit had died in two days of battle in Ramadi. At home, he was drinking hard to stave off the nightmares. Though he managed to get a job as a roofer, he was suffering flashbacks and panic attacks so intense that he couldn't concentrate on his work. Sometimes, he heard in his mind the haunting chants of the muezzin—the Muslim call to prayer that he'd heard many times in Iraq. Again and again, he'd relive the moments he was in a Humvee, manning the machine gun, but helpless to save his fellow Marines. "He'd be seeing them in his own mind, standing in front of him," says his stepmother, Marianne.

Schulze, who earned two Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in Iraq, was initially reluctant to turn to the VA. ....
But when the panic attacks got to be too much, he started showing up at the VA emergency room, where doctors recommended he try group therapy. He resisted; he didn't think hearing other veterans' depressing problems would help solve his own. Then, early last month, after more than a year of anxiety, he finally decided to admit himself to an inpatient program. Schulze packed a bag on Jan. 11 and drove with his family to the VA center in St. Cloud, about 70 miles away. The Schulzes were ushered into the mental-health-care unit and an intake worker sat down at a computer across from them. "She started typing," Marianne says. "She asked, 'Do you feel suicidal?' and Jonathan said, 'Yes, I feel suicidal'." The woman kept typing, seemingly unconcerned. Marianne was livid. "He's an Iraqi veteran!" she snapped. "Listen to him!" The woman made a phone call, then told him no one was available that day to screen him for hospitalization. Jonathan could come back tomorrow or call the counselor for a screening on the phone.

When he did call the following day, the response from the clinic was even more disheartening: the center was full. Schulze would be No. 26 on the waiting list. He was encouraged to call back periodically over the next two weeks in case there was a cancellation. Marianne was listening in on the conversation from the dining room. She watched Jonathan, slumped on the couch, as he talked to the doctor. "I heard him say the same thing: I'm suicidal, I feel lost, I feel hopelessness," she says. Four days later Schulze got drunk, wrapped an electrical cord around a basement beam in his home and hanged himself. A friend he telephoned while tying the noose called the police, but by the time officers broke down the door, Schulze was dead.

This is how the VA responds to mental health crises? Does a person need to be bleeding from their eye sockets to get care? A person says he's suicidal: Listen to him. Believe him. Treat him. Do not send him away! A source in the article admits that mental health issues get short shrift with the VA. That's repulsive to me. And now they're trying to give a nice spinny-spin to the one day they pay some attention to suicide? Fuck you. I'm sorry for my language, but I don't think Jonathan Schulze would appreciate your "day."

Forgotten Heroes

["Patriotism" by John Slobodnik]