Page 626 - Total War on PTSD

choosing suicide takes place. This was an important conversation that ensued in the aftermath of a May 2019 House of Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing addressing Veterans’ suicides. AMVETS, one of the nation’s largest Veteran service organizations, did not hold back in venting its frustrations at the hearing’s lack of personalization and emphasis on systems, instead. “The reality is laws, executive orders, investigations, awareness campaigns, meetings and hearings don’t stop Veterans’ suicide,” said Sherman Gillums, Jr., the organization’s Chief Advocacy Officer. He continued “[t]hey may undergird efforts that attempt to do. But the only thing that stops Veterans from killing themselves is ‘hope’...[and] the fastest way to kill hope is to neutralize it with apathy, where process matters more than people.”
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Although, overall, the numerous conversations and forms of treatments regarding suicide prevention are a step in the right direction, it is also important to keep things in perspective. As with humans themselves, stakeholders in the Veterans community can benefit from the power of pause, and taking time to reflect on new treatments and alternative therapies as they emerge. “There are new ideas and new organizations popping up each week,” Rieman cautions, “although I applaud them for stretching the limits, we need to be careful about giving people false hope that sets that person up for failure.” Despite the challenges associated with so many new organizations and treatments — some of which will inevitably be more successful than others — most experts agree that progress is being made.
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