THE WAR
WITHIN
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
erans suicide crisis line (800273-8255), operated by the VA,
gets an average of 17,000 calls a
day. The VA believes the suicide
rate for all U.S. veterans is more
than 500 per month.
Most of those who committed
suicide had struggled alone and
never got help. The VA’s Shinseki
said recently that perhaps two out
of three veterans who commit suicide were not enrolled in the VA’s
healthcare system. Nor had they
ever been diagnosed. “The majority,” the Pentagon reported, “did not
have a known history of a behavioral health disorder” or treatment.
“We have underestimated the
human costs of war, not just for
the victims but for the warriors
as well,” said Dr. David Spiegel,
a neuropsychiatrist and director
of Stanford University’s Center
on Stress and Health. “War is an
unnatural experience. It doesn’t
surprise me that a substantial
number of people are impaired.”
“I BELIEVE IN YOU”
The striking fact about today’s
epidemic of war trauma is that it
affects a self-selected population
of Americans who have already
HUFFINGTON
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demonstrated courage, grit and
resolve by volunteering to serve
in wartime.
Take Natasha Young. She grew
up in a bleak neighborhood with
a wandering, crack-addict father
and a single mom on welfare who
struggled with drugs. Natasha
was a good student but got into
her fair share of trouble.
When she was 17, she met a
Marine Corps recruiter and her
life changed.
“He represented everything I
wanted for my life,” she says. “He
said we expect you to work hard,
show up on time, be a good human being, service to others, pay
your bills, don’t drink and drive,
don’t do drugs — all the things I
would want for my child.”
What had been a dead-end future for her suddenly opened up
with a steady paycheck, honorable work, perhaps even college.
“It was the first time in my
young adult life someone said, ‘I
think you can do this, I believe in
you,’” she recalls. “For the first
time in my life, someone said to
me ‘I see more in you than you
ever saw in yourself.’ That really resonated with me because
I wanted to make somebody
proud, I wanted to be better than