Damaged Brains, Diminished Lives

A hundred years ago, it was called shell shock because artillery shells were what landed in the trenches and exploded around the British troops. It was also called battle fatigue, and it could strike at any time, in the first firefight or after years of combat...

Veteran Suicides. Again.

Unfortunately, more still needs to be said about military servicemembers and suicide. The whole subject is fraught with political and emotional minefields. We discussed the “won’t accept help” trope, and the terrible barrier created by “bad paper” discharges that...

The Vietnam War Legacy

In the previous post, we learned that the servicemember suicide rate is not quite as high as what people go around saying. Forget about the frequently and erroneously cited 22 suicides per day — it’s “only” 20.6 per day. That is also an upsetting statistic, especially...

Of Servicemembers and Suicide

Last time we talked about some of the incidents described in Richard R. Troxell’s book, Looking Up at the Bottom Line. Back in 1989, there was talk of decommissioning Bergstrom Air Force Base, right outside Austin. Richard set out to gather support for the idea of...