According to the Times, 347 soldiers were killed last year, and 381 committed suicide.
Legislation to provide funds for the mental health of military personnel and veterans was removed from a Congressional bill last year for budgetary reasons. The Times comments:
Considering the two wars were declared and waged with scant attention to their full costs, lawmakers add insult to injury by invoking budget concerns for the traumatic needs of actual warriors.
The medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention testified before a House subcommittee this month that suicide among veterans is an “absolute crisis.”
A provision on mental health care for the military appears again in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. It’s been approved by the House and needs final approval by the Senate. You can email your senator from the Senate contact information page. Senators are listed in order of state.
As a blogger wrote at the site where I found this photo, “The real question is, why don’t we care anymore?”
