LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON
09.01-08.13
Just Ask
N THIS WEEK’S issue, we launch “Invisible Casualties,”
a month-long series
that examines the ever-growing — but not widely discussed
— issue of suicide in the military. Since 2000, the rate at
which troops are being hospitalized for mental-health illness
has risen a startling 87 percent.
David Wood spent months
speaking to military members and
veterans, their family members and
mental-health experts to answer
the question: How do we help?
ART STREIBER
I
We meet former National Guard
Lt. Mike McMichael, who shares
the harrowing story that edged
him closer to seriously considering suicide — a story that could
have had a different end had his
wife, Jackie, not intervened.
“[Suicide] was the only thing
that was going to make things
right,” McMichael says of his
plan to drown himself in the river
outside his home. Until one day,
Jackie sat him down and said,
“You’re not gonna talk like that
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