On Memorial Day: Press coverage probes suicides

On Memorial Day this year, many press reports focus on the fallout from the current war, not past conflicts, as was long typical. Much in evidence, after years of being virtually ignored, is the frightful surge in suicide among Iraq vets both here and in Iraq. Many newspapers this weekend ran overall assessments of the problem, published editorials calling for the military and the VA to take stronger measures to fight post- traumatic stress disorder, or recalled recent suicides in their circulation area. One suicide just this week involved Chad Oligschlaeger, a Marine who was found at his barracks at Twenty Nine Palms in California. His family said he was on eight medications for PTSD and had been sent back to Iraq for a second tour after asking superiors for help, which he allegedly did not get. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram profiled the family of another suicide victim, this one in Iraq, who shot himself in front of his troops. Chris Vaughan writes: "On July 11, 2007, in a violent Baghdad neighborhood, Master Sgt. Jeffrey R. McKinney killed himself. He put his M-4 rifle to his neck and pulled the trigger. "There was no Purple Heart, and the Defense Department announced it as a 'non-combat-related incident.' But Jeffrey McKinney, 40, a company first sergeant and a 19-year Army veteran, is no less a casualty of the war in Iraq than the thousands of young men and women who have been killed by sniper fire and roadside bombs. "Some injuries just can't be seen." His father tells the reporter: "I don't mind telling you that I personally hold the company commander responsible. This man made a poor decision. We want to call attention to the military's responsibility and to make sure that people are aware of the signs, because Jeff gave a million signs that he needed help." In an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Bowman writes of the suicide of his son -- who killed himself on Thanksgiving, 2005, in the study of their home, after returning from Iraq with depression and PTSD: "His war was over, his demons gone." McClatchy Newspapers carries a lengthy feature report on a 2007 vet suicide, written by Halimah Abdullah. It opens: "Until the day he died, Sgt. Brian Rand believed he was being haunted by the ghost of the Iraqi man he killed. The ghost choked Rand while he slept in his bunk, forcing him to wake up gasping for air and clawing at his throat. "He whispered that Rand was a vampire and looked on as the soldier stabbed another member of Fort Campbell's 96th Aviation Support Battalion in the neck with a fork in the mess hall. Eventually, the ghost told Rand he needed to kill himself. "According to family members and police reports, on Feb. 20, 2007, just a few months after being discharged from his second tour of duty in Iraq, Rand smoked half of a cigarette as he wrote a suicide note, grabbed a gun and went to the Cumberland River Center Pavilion in Clarksville, Tenn. As the predawn dark pressed in, he breathed in the wintry air and stared out at the park where he and his wife, Dena, had married. "Then he placed the gun to his head and silenced his inner ghosts. 'My brother was afraid to ask for help,' said April Somdahl. 'And when he finally did ask for help the military let him down.' "Since the start of the Iraq war, Fort Campbell, a sprawling installation on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, has seen a spike in the number of suicides and soldiers suffering from severe post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In 2007, nine soldiers from Fort Campbell committed suicide - three during the first few weeks of October, according to a letter sent to base personnel by the 101st Airborne Division's commander, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser. "According to the Army, more than 2,000 active-duty soldiers attempted suicide or suffered serious self-inflicted injuries in 2007, compared to fewer than 500 such cases in 2002, the year before the United States invaded Iraq. A recent study by the nonprofit Rand Corp. found that 300,000 of the nearly 1.7 million soldiers who've served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or a major mental illness, conditions that are worsened by lengthy deployments and, if left untreated, can lead to suicide."