To combat veteran suicide, the stigma must end

Martin Goettsch was 18-years-old when he was deployed to fight in the Vietnam War with the Navy. Goettsch remembers the feeling of being far from home, constantly on edge and not knowing when shots would be fired. He remembers the realization that you can save some people, but there will always be those who can’t be saved.

Nearly four decades after his second tour in Vietnam, Goettsch, a psychiatric nurse at the Syracuse VA Medical Center, is engaged in another battle, this time against an intangible foe: the rising rate of suicide among veterans. 

November 11 is Veterans Day, “a celebration to honor America's veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good,” according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. These sacrifices often extend beyond the battlefield.

An estimated 22 veterans die from suicide each day. Since 2001, more have died by suicide than in combat.

Goettsch visits Washington D.C. almost every year to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. “There’s sadness and then there’s anger,” Goettsch said. “I go down to the wall and see some 58,000 names. Finding out that there’s more people dying of suicide than killed in the war —that’s not right,” he said. 

Researchers have identified stigma as a major barrier to care, said Rosalinda Maury, director of applied research and analytics at the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University. In a recent survey conducted by the institute, it was the No. 1 reason reported for not seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder or a traumatic brain injury. “They didn't want it to discredit them in their current employment situation,” Maury said.

Sabah Altheblah, suicide prevention coordinator for the Syracuse VA Medical Center, has been working with veterans for nearly five years in the Behavioral Health Outpatient Clinic. “Even when someone does complete suicide, you don’t see that listed in obituaries — it’s the taboo of the taboo. Because of this stigma, sometimes families want to deal with these things within the home instead of talking to a therapist,” she said.   

Another major challenge is publicizing services, Altheblah said. “The VA has numerous resources, but getting awareness out that you can get appointments despite what you’re hearing in the news and the media is difficult. We have a walk-in clinic where you don’t even need an appointment, but people don’t know that,” she said.

But access to counselors may depend upon where you live, Maury said. “Unless you're in an area that has a wealth of counselors embedded with the VA, you don’t have access,” she said.  

To tackle this issue, the Department of Veterans Affairs has set up a national 24-hour Veteran’s Crisis Line, which is headquartered in Canandaigua, New York. The center uses technology to coordinate with police and EMTs to provide emergency response to veterans all over the country, taking more than 22,000 calls per month. In fact, the call center was the subject of an Oscar-winning HBO documentary, Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1.

“As a nation we have a lot to learn about suicide,” Altheblah said. “It’s unlike a medical condition like pneumonia where you have X, Y and Z symptoms therefore you have pneumonia. We can’t say you have X, Y and Z symptoms, therefore you will have a suicide attempt.”

Suicide is particularly difficult to study, she said, because people don’t like talking about it, and more research is needed to identify risk and resilience factors. “Years ago, you would go for one deployment, but a lot of these men and women are going for more deployments, and that puts them at higher risk,” Alteblah said. “They’re seeing more trauma and they're seeing it more frequently.”

The military is working to encourage the use of mental health services, Alteblah said. The fact that politicians are recognizing the issue is a step in the right direction, but progress is slow, she explained.

When Martin Goettsch came home from Vietnam, mental health wasn’t even mentioned in his 5-minute debriefing, he said. In the future, Goettsch said he hopes every veteran who comes home will have a safe zone where they can seek support.

“You know the old saying, ‘if you keep on doing the same thing over and over, you’re crazy’? Sometimes we just have to continue reaching out to that veteran,” Goettsch said.

The 2015 Central New York Veterans Parade and Expo will be held November 7 at the New York State Fairgrounds. Syracuse University will also be hosting a Veterans Day Fun Run/Walk on November 11 beginning in front of Hendricks Chapel at 6:30 a.m., followed by an 11 a.m. ceremony at Hendricks Chapel.