Darrell Owens: Responding to veteran suicide crisis
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Over the past several years, most Americans have learned that veterans face a suicide crisis. We have been told that veterans take their own lives at a rate of 17 per day. The numbers resonate deeply with people across the country.
Here in Pennsylvania, 240 veterans reportedly took their lives in 2020, though the actual number is likely higher. It has been an important issue for years, including in Philadelphia, where a veteran took his own life outside the VA hospital in 2015.
These tragic final acts of some of our nation’s finest heroes represent a dark stain on a society that generally reveres those who sacrificed and defended the country around the globe. I am an Army veteran myself, born and raised outside Erie, and I fully understand the long and storied history the veterans from this commonwealth have played in defense of our nation.
In the renewed discussion of the impact of mental health on the veteran community, an important piece was missing: how can we design programs that identify those at the greatest risk of suicide and accidental overdose, or self injury mortality (SIM), before a crisis escalates?
To get “upstream” from the crisis requires greater specificity of the decedent’s demographics, military experience, and death details. Operation Deep DiveTM (OpDD) started to put the pieces together for this effort, and the results were alarming.
The preliminary findings from OpDD show that the number of former service members who die from suicide is almost 1.4 times greater than previously reported. Additionally, one of the glaring issues identified is the staggering rate of SIM deaths among former service members — nearly twice as high as the United States rate.
Tragically, the former service member suicide and SIM rates combined are 2.4 times greater than the already high death rate. The OpDD data from eight states (Alabama, Florida, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Maine, Montana, Michigan and Oregon) indicates approximately 44 former service members take their lives each day across the country.
We also found that, on average, these eight states miscount former service members’ deaths by 25%, including undercounting the deaths of nearly 1 in 5 former service members and overcounting individuals who never served.
One of the issues repeatedly identified is the degree of variance in reporting across states, counties and local communities. Further, county and state officials may under-report suicides due to the stigma associated with death by suicide. Instead, many officials may report these deaths as accidental or undetermined.
However, more data is needed to capture the scope of the problem. It can start with the VA more accurately tracking and assessing SIM. This term is not new or novel. SIM has been extensively researched and peer-reviewed. Per the National Institute of Health publication, SIM is considered a “fatal self-injury … associated with deliberate behaviors is seriously underestimated owing to misclassification of poisoning suicides and mischaracterization of most drug poisoning deaths as “accidents” on death certificates.”
Our nation will not counsel our way out of former service member suicide and SIM. Counseling is a great tool, but not the only means. Reduction of suicide and SIM are an outcome of holistic, personal engagement. The only way to address the issue is to end the feelings of hopelessness that drive former service members to these outcomes and to improve their overall quality of life. Part of this involves improving access to claims and health care, employment, finances, family and a host of related issues that make every individual unique.
Together, we can do better. But we need to identify those former service members at greatest risk and customize a community-based strategy to help them. More operational data is needed to accomplish this and much more will come from OpDD as the study expands. We believe OpDD offers a new way to look at the issue and allows us to have an honest dialogue into how our nation and its government can effectively respond to this challenge.
Darrell Owens of Waterford, Pa., is director of government relations for America’s Warrior Partnership and an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve.