My son was stationed at fort Riley, he committed suicide a month after your article. He was supposed to be inpatient after an attempt. Instead they gave him a 4-day pass that allowed him to go out and buy a pistol and return to the barracks with it. His suicide is not the first it's one in the many of a long line of suicides at Ft.Riley. Ft. Riley mental health in Irwin Army Community Hospital are completely broken. Going to either is like putting a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound. Sadly, or should I say magically though you don't hear about Ft Riley because they've gotten very good at covering it up, making it go away. You can make all the changes you want without accountability nothing will change.
I’m so sorry to hear about your son. That is devastating and no parent should have to go through that. I hope we can change this trend by focusing on the regions that most need our attention. Please continue to share your story.
Excellent information and presentation, as always, Jeremy. The suicide statistics for veterans are shocking—it's obvious our country needs to do a much better job. My grandfather was a veteran of WI, and my father a Veteran of WWII. My father went to college on the GI Bill ( the first in his family) and purchased our family home with a VA loan. Given his family's financial situation, he never could have gone to college without government support.
Thanks so much for sharing Joan and nice to know about your family's military service too. Hugely important. The GI Bill was tremendous for helping so many families find opportunity that it's really a terrible shame that more were prevented from taking advantage of it
Most assuredly a shame that discrimination played a part in distribution of GI Bill Funds...as it played (and continues to play) a huge part in everything else.
This is just great and is a sobering reminder of why all of us -- especially those who have never served -- owe an enormous amount of respect to our veterans. Just yesterday at the Apple Store where I live, I met a Navy Vet from the Vietnam War (he was wearing his hat) and as a result, we had a wonderful conversation. The repair agent at Apple waited patiently while we spoke and then after said, "Not everyone gets you. You do. You made him feel great." I said, "Well, my dad fought in the Second World War and though I never served, I understand what these men and women sacrificed for us." Thanks for this very much.
100%. Empathy is key here not only for helping to navigate civilian // veteran conversations, but also for bridging the gap across so many of these inequalities
I'm not a writer by any means. I read your post and it hit home for me. Your right, no parent should have to go through what our family has, it was preventable, Ft Riley failed my son. Steve Beynon wrote a decent article on Austin.
Looking back we can see the steps or regions of failure, there were many. The Army acknowledges the problem but it stops there. Leaders talk the talk but don't walk the walk. It seems as if the suicide issue has been folded into the metrics, watch the video and check the box. Once your in the green you can move on. There is no real human interaction to a issue that needs it most. When a soldier or anyone is struggling that human connection can make all the difference, it can save lives. The military fails here over and over again and will continue to do so until this changes.
I’m disappointed that there was no mention of how to deal with the extremely inadequate VA in the solutions part of the post. It seems to me that disbanding the VA healthcare system and changing it to an insurance type program where you can just take your money with you and choose where to go is the most workable solution. Maybe keep the major medical centers but get rid of the smaller clinics. We have one doctor that covers three clinics in three different towns that are about 110 miles apart from the first to the third. Said doctor is well past retirement age and is cognitively burning out. Wait times are still extremely long. You can’t even call the local clinic, your call goes to a call center 8 hours away and you will be lucky to hear back from the doctor in a week and God forbid you miss their call because it will be another week before you can get ahold of them again. The MISSION Act helped but is far from adequate and there are a lot of screw ups with billing and it seems as if every third visit or so we have to fight to get the VA to cover a referral or community care. Don’t get me started on what a hot mess the rural nursing homes are and worse when a community doesn’t have a rural nursing home veterans often have to be placed in VA nursing homes hours away rather than in community nursing homes. Everything with the VA is a fight. It’s a fight to schedule an appointment. A fight to get appointments paid for. A fight to get the VA the medical records from other clinics that they should already have. A fight to get your appropriate disability benefits. A fight to get access to treatments other than pills for a variety of issues. Clearly the government in incapable of making the system work so a complete overhaul needs to be undertaken.
Thanks so much for raising this Tara - these types of stories are such an important part of our work and help provide meaningful detail that brings real change to the data we present.
I absolutely agree that the VA healthcare system can be improved and you are correct that we should have put more in this piece about the ways to improve that. I will note that the VA's AIR Commission Report I think does as nice job of highlighting the areas that need a larger overhaul and the areas that are better serving their communities. https://www.va.gov/AIRCOMMISSIONREPORT/docs/VA-Report-to-AIR-Commission-Volume-I.pdf
It sounds like you are a vet who has had a lot of experience with the VA?
My son was stationed at fort Riley, he committed suicide a month after your article. He was supposed to be inpatient after an attempt. Instead they gave him a 4-day pass that allowed him to go out and buy a pistol and return to the barracks with it. His suicide is not the first it's one in the many of a long line of suicides at Ft.Riley. Ft. Riley mental health in Irwin Army Community Hospital are completely broken. Going to either is like putting a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound. Sadly, or should I say magically though you don't hear about Ft Riley because they've gotten very good at covering it up, making it go away. You can make all the changes you want without accountability nothing will change.
I’m so sorry to hear about your son. That is devastating and no parent should have to go through that. I hope we can change this trend by focusing on the regions that most need our attention. Please continue to share your story.
Excellent information and presentation, as always, Jeremy. The suicide statistics for veterans are shocking—it's obvious our country needs to do a much better job. My grandfather was a veteran of WI, and my father a Veteran of WWII. My father went to college on the GI Bill ( the first in his family) and purchased our family home with a VA loan. Given his family's financial situation, he never could have gone to college without government support.
Thanks so much for sharing Joan and nice to know about your family's military service too. Hugely important. The GI Bill was tremendous for helping so many families find opportunity that it's really a terrible shame that more were prevented from taking advantage of it
Most assuredly a shame that discrimination played a part in distribution of GI Bill Funds...as it played (and continues to play) a huge part in everything else.
This is just great and is a sobering reminder of why all of us -- especially those who have never served -- owe an enormous amount of respect to our veterans. Just yesterday at the Apple Store where I live, I met a Navy Vet from the Vietnam War (he was wearing his hat) and as a result, we had a wonderful conversation. The repair agent at Apple waited patiently while we spoke and then after said, "Not everyone gets you. You do. You made him feel great." I said, "Well, my dad fought in the Second World War and though I never served, I understand what these men and women sacrificed for us." Thanks for this very much.
100%. Empathy is key here not only for helping to navigate civilian // veteran conversations, but also for bridging the gap across so many of these inequalities
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/magazine/suicide-military-austin-valley.html?smid=url-share
Thanks so much for sharing this Rick and I’m so glad to see that the New York Times is covering your son’s story and this tremendous injustice
Feel free to share and discuss this. Janet put a lot of effort into it, talked to a lot of people
I'm not a writer by any means. I read your post and it hit home for me. Your right, no parent should have to go through what our family has, it was preventable, Ft Riley failed my son. Steve Beynon wrote a decent article on Austin.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/30/soldier-attempted-suicide-poland-left-roam-fort-riley-he-killed-himself.html
Looking back we can see the steps or regions of failure, there were many. The Army acknowledges the problem but it stops there. Leaders talk the talk but don't walk the walk. It seems as if the suicide issue has been folded into the metrics, watch the video and check the box. Once your in the green you can move on. There is no real human interaction to a issue that needs it most. When a soldier or anyone is struggling that human connection can make all the difference, it can save lives. The military fails here over and over again and will continue to do so until this changes.
I’m disappointed that there was no mention of how to deal with the extremely inadequate VA in the solutions part of the post. It seems to me that disbanding the VA healthcare system and changing it to an insurance type program where you can just take your money with you and choose where to go is the most workable solution. Maybe keep the major medical centers but get rid of the smaller clinics. We have one doctor that covers three clinics in three different towns that are about 110 miles apart from the first to the third. Said doctor is well past retirement age and is cognitively burning out. Wait times are still extremely long. You can’t even call the local clinic, your call goes to a call center 8 hours away and you will be lucky to hear back from the doctor in a week and God forbid you miss their call because it will be another week before you can get ahold of them again. The MISSION Act helped but is far from adequate and there are a lot of screw ups with billing and it seems as if every third visit or so we have to fight to get the VA to cover a referral or community care. Don’t get me started on what a hot mess the rural nursing homes are and worse when a community doesn’t have a rural nursing home veterans often have to be placed in VA nursing homes hours away rather than in community nursing homes. Everything with the VA is a fight. It’s a fight to schedule an appointment. A fight to get appointments paid for. A fight to get the VA the medical records from other clinics that they should already have. A fight to get your appropriate disability benefits. A fight to get access to treatments other than pills for a variety of issues. Clearly the government in incapable of making the system work so a complete overhaul needs to be undertaken.
Thanks so much for raising this Tara - these types of stories are such an important part of our work and help provide meaningful detail that brings real change to the data we present.
I absolutely agree that the VA healthcare system can be improved and you are correct that we should have put more in this piece about the ways to improve that. I will note that the VA's AIR Commission Report I think does as nice job of highlighting the areas that need a larger overhaul and the areas that are better serving their communities. https://www.va.gov/AIRCOMMISSIONREPORT/docs/VA-Report-to-AIR-Commission-Volume-I.pdf
It sounds like you are a vet who has had a lot of experience with the VA?
No but my husband is a medically retired veteran, so yeah we get lots of experience with the VA.