And for months before he ripped off his helmet and ran into the massive rotors of a Seahawk helicopter to end his life, Brandon Caserta begged for mental health help.
These are three people I profiled in stories about military suicide in the past year, and they all had something in common. Each of them did exactly what the campaigns and counselors and public service announcements tell people in crisis to do: They asked for help.
The U.S. military is clearly not answering their pleas.
“You have a task that is almost insurmountable,” said Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Tex.), during a congressional hearing in September on preventing veteran suicides.
There were 6,146 veteran suicide deaths in 2020, which was 343 fewer than in 2019, according to the most recent report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The deaths decreased that year after two decades of steep increases.
During that hearing, members of Congress repeated horror stories they had heard from veterans trying to access mental health care. Like the veteran living in Maine who was told to go to New York for his counseling appointments, or a pregnant veteran in Illinois facing a $50, out-of-pocket, upfront charge for mental health screening at her VA, something even private insurers don’t ask.
The military and veterans affairs departments are struggling to manage a nationwide, escalating mental health crisis that is paired with a pronounced shortage of mental health professionals. That September congressional hearing went into scheduling procedures and staffing and paperwork that goes into getting help.
But it’s a much broader issue. Just ask veterans.
“In my opinion, it is because we’re trying to address it reactively, primarily through the lens of mental health,” wrote combat veteran Cole Lyle, who tried to take his life not long after leaving the Marine Corps.
He sees prevention counseling before crisis counseling as more effective. “Dealing with regular civilian things like unemployment, relationship stress, lack of purpose, acute financial concern, substance abuse, etc., are all a part of the human condition that can be exacerbated by service-related issues,” he wrote on his organization’s blog.
So veterans are doing what they were trained to do: standing in the gap.
“How do we challenge this? It’s through community-based healing,” said Scott Hyder, the founder and president of the nonprofit Hidden Battles Foundation, which is based in the Massachusetts hometown of Santiago, the Air Force service member who killed himself at the Lincoln Memorial on Nov. 11 last year.
Santiago posted a long, despondent message on social media explaining his depression and desperation. What followed was a heartbreaking, time-stamped string of pleas from friends who read the posts and didn’t know he was suffering, begging him to call them. As they were posting, it was too late.
“A lot has happened since Kenny’s passing,” Hyder said. “988 [the nationwide suicide hotline that got 100,000 calls the first week it went live in September] has been introduced, a lot of organizations have been focusing more on mental health, which is great.”
But what really needs to change is the approach. The military can’t possibly succeed by parachuting into mental health crises with government-issued counseling to act like tourniquets for suicidal ideation. Some have suggested that mental health be treated like…
Read More: Veterans deserve more support than they’re getting.
