18:25 News 8 comments
On average, 22 veterans commit suicide each day,
according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
To commemorate them and raise awareness, 32 veterans
from the group flew to Washington, D.C., to plant 1,892 flags on the National
Mall today, one for each of the veterans that the group says took his or her
own life in 2014. IAVA extrapolated that number from a 2012 Veterans Administration
reportfinding that 22
veterans took their lives each day in 2009 and 2010, only a slight increase
from years past, and a number that includes all veterans, not just those who
served in America’s more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The event was part of IAVA’s 2014 Storm the Hill
campaign, an annual week of action in which organization vets meet with
lawmakers to push a veterans’ agenda picked for that year. In 2013, it was the
Veterans Affairs benefits-claim backlog; this year, it’s veteran suicides.
“I know several individuals that have died by
suicide,” Sara Poquette of Dallas, a video journalist who served in Iraq, said,
adding that she herself considered suicide while experiencing the hardships of
reintegrating into civilian life. “For me personally, it was more just getting
through until I was really ready to get help, just realizing that my life was
going down a path that I never really wanted it to go down.”
In Joining IAVA, Poquette said, she found a “new
unit.”
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is
pushing a bill, the Suicide Prevention for America’s Veterans Act, which Sen.
John Walsh, D-Mont., plans to introduce. Walsh commanded a Montana National
Guard battalion in Iraq.
“When we returned home, one of my young sergeants died
by suicide, so this is very personal to me,” Walsh told reporters on the Mall
today, calling veteran suicides “an epidemic we cannot allow to continue.”
The bill would extend eligibility for Veterans
Administration health care, create a pilot program for student-loan repayment
if health care professionals work for the VA, instigate a review of certain
behavioral discharges, and mandate a review of mental health care programs at
the VA, IAVA said.
The group is calling on Congress to pass the bill by
Memorial Day.
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