America has a tragic secret shame — suicide is taking more of our country’s military heroes than combat!
According to the White House, more than 65,000 veterans have killed themselves since 2010, more than the total number of soldiers who perished in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam combined.
“More attention, more money, more of everything needs to be devoted to this issue,” veteran advocate Derrick Lozzio tells The National ENQUIRER. “Our country owes these people nothing less.”
The Veterans Administration says 22 former soldiers commit suicide every day. Sadly, their passing typically draws little attention. One recent exception was the death of “Kill Bill” actor Michael Madsen’s son, Hudson.
The 26-year-old Army sergeant died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the Hawaiian island of Oahu in late January.
Heartbroken Madsen, 64, recalled Hudson telling him just a few days before the tragedy he was “happy,” and his son’s last text to him was “I love you dad.”
But for every Hudson Madsen, scores more die in relative anonymity.
Ohio resident Matt McCarthy enlisted in the Army at age 26 after 9/11 and served multiple tours as a bomb tech. He returned home to be with his family, but his demons followed.
On a TV interview, his widow, Heidi McCarthy, recalls the fateful July night in 2020 when Matt took his life: “We were sitting outside together, enjoying the evening. I had come in for something. He came in the door, got my 9mm [handgun], walked back out the door, and I heard the shot.”
Ashley Jackson was an ammunition technician in the Marines. In April 2015, after an argument with her husband at their Camp Pendleton, Calif., home, she hanged herself with a dog leash.
“These are guys and women who gave until they had nothing left to give,” says Kim Ruocco, whose husband, Marine Maj. John Ruocco, committed suicide in 2005 after flying helicopters in Bosnia, Somalia and Iraq. “They didn’t die a heroic death, but they lived heroic lives.”
Veteran advocates blame the crisis on the soldiers’ difficulty transitioning from military to civilian life, the scars they carry home and the stigma associated with seeking help.
“When you see someone wounded or killed, at that moment you don’t have time to stop and grieve or anything,” notes Lozzio, who runs Catch 22 Peer Support in El Paso, Texas. “You have to do your job or more people could be killed or wounded.”
“It’s only later, once you get home, that you begin to process it all. I experienced it myself. I saw dead bodies and friends die, and at the time I had to just keep doing my job.”
“Years later, those things come flooding back. I still feel those things and see those things on a daily basis, and it’s very hard.”
Adding insult to injury, in 2019 the government’s Department of Veterans Affairs released an analysis of its suicide prevention program that was mandated by Congress — and touted mostly “positive outcomes’’ even though the program didn’t translate into any fewer suicides.
The Trump administration launched a new program called the President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide (PREVENTS), and advocates can only hope it turns out to be something better than a clever acronym.
“We’ve already seen four years of wasted time,” says Joe Chenelly, executive director at AMVETS, about the initial analysis. “It’s not a partisan mistake or problem. We’ve seen this across administrations … doing the same things over and over again.”
Suicide is also a problem among active-duty service members. The Department of Defense puts the rate at well over double that for civilians.
“I’m deeply concerned,” says Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. “One loss by suicide is too many.”
Yet the numbers keep rising. In 2018, 326 active-duty American soldiers killed themselves, and that number jumped to 350 in 2019, and 385 in 2020.
“The stigma is the biggest part,” says Lozzio. “People are afraid to ask for help. In the military, asking for help can be perceived as a sign of weakness.”
“Things aren’t going to get better until we get down in the trenches to find these people who are at risk and get them help.” NE
