Veterans and Suicide: The VA Offers Hope

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) hands out a flyer on their annual National Survivor’s Day that reads, “Every 16 minutes someone in the U.S. dies by suicide. Every 17 minutes someone is left to make sense of it.” A year ago, I began the arduous task of trying to make sense of my boyfriend’s suicide and miraculously learned that the more I worked to understand the causes of suicide, the more suicide came to me.

One of those suicide stories was about Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a returning veteran from the Iraq war and a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. I read Lt. Whiteside’s heartbreaking tale in the Washington Post about her two commanders who brought charges against her when she tried to kill herself in front of an Army psychiatrist while still stationed overseas. Once home, she was institutionalized as a mental health patient at Walter Reed, only to learn that she was court-martialed with eight federal charges, including kidnapping, aggravated assault, and two attempts of intentional self-injury without intent to avoid service. Having already survived one suicide attempt, Lt. Whiteside sat in the hospital awaiting the outcome of her charges—until she attempted to take her life once again.

Fortunately, Lt. Whiteside survived, and in response to the damage inflicted onto her and other struggling veterans, I wrote an advocacy letter to Colonel Patricia D. Horoho, the Commander of Walter Reed Health Care System. I never received a response from Colonel Horoho, nor did I particularly need one, but writing that letter forced me to try to find answers to crucial questions about veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. What types of trauma affected soldiers like Lt. Whitehead? And who was accountable for the returning veterans once they landed home? Finally, what services were available to them upon their return? Army studies showed that suicides of active-duty soldiers had reached their highest level in 2007 and attempted suicides had increased sixfold since the beginning of the Iraq war. I wanted to know how veterans with similar fates to Lt. Whiteside’s might regain their hope.