October 13, 2017 • 43 mins
Women veterans are taking their own lives at staggering rates, according to the latest research from the VA. E&B take a closer look at the numbers to better understand the problem - and possible solutions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily, and this is and you're listening
to stuff Mom never told you. Today on the podcast,
we're talking through a truly troubling but important subject and
(00:26):
that has to do with the intersection of gender and
veteran suicide. Sadly, there was a new report released earlier
this week that we really wanted to jump on and
talk through and parse through to better understand why. There
are new numbers out showing that women veterans are much
more likely and the data on this is new in
(00:49):
terms of being able to make these conclusions, but women
veterans have been found to be much much more likely
than their non veteran counterparts to commit suicide to take
their own lives. And we just have to say, this
is a topic that a lot of people might find
hard to deal with and we totally understand. So big
trigger warning, this is going to be an episode that
deals with some heavy issues like sexual assault in the
(01:10):
military and self harm and suicide. So, um, if those
are issues that are complicated for you to deal with,
you should just know that that's going to be the
topic of today's show. Yeah, and we don't I mean,
we don't want to be downers about this, but I
feel strongly that it's important for us to talk about
these intersections and for us to talk about what we
(01:31):
can do more of as a country and as individuals
to help our veterans, men and women alike well, because
if we aren't talking about it, if we aren't studying it,
if you aren't getting research and data around it, there's
no way that we're going to be able to properly
tackle it. So, even though it's not a topic that
I think anybody necessarily likes talking about or finds cheery
or uplifting, is a topic that we have to deal
(01:52):
with because if we're not dealing with it, we're not
dealing with it right exactly. And what's interesting here is
that suicide is stereotypically associated with maleness, and in reality,
it's true that across the broader population, men or people
who identify as men are much much more likely to
commit suicide than women are across the board. But what
(02:15):
is troubling is this sort of old stereotype of the
older veteran who takes their own life, and of course
that by stereotypical we're talking about men here. There is
a lot of truth to that stereotype. The suicide rate
amongst middle age and older adult veterans remains the highest. Now,
Researchers have long thought that suicide rates were higher across
(02:38):
the board for older veterans, but because the v A
just completed a comprehensive examination of more than fifty five
million records from nineteen seventy nine through to two thousand fourteen,
they actually have new research that shows that statistic is
not true for women veterans, who are much more likely
(02:58):
to take their own lives shortly after their time and service,
and that finding has some serious ramifications for how we
implement suicide prevention programming. Yeah, I think when you look
at folks who serve and then and their own lives,
I do think there's this this stereotype that it's older
folks who have long been living with this traumas their
(03:20):
whole lives. Maybe they've dealt with alcoholism, maybe they've dealt
with you know, addiction issues, they've been exactly exactly. I
definitely think in pop culture you see this idea of
the older veteran who's been trying to get it together
and just suit of can't. And I think shifting the
way that we think about it along the lines of gender,
and it's more along the lines of what is actually
(03:41):
happening in reality. I think it's going to be instrumental
to how we come at this issue, because if you're
expecting veteran suicide to look like an older person who
has been, you know, dealing with it, slogging through for
thirty years and then this can't handle it anymore, but
in actuality, it can look like a woman who is
struggling to readjust her civilian life and can't find out
(04:03):
she can't. Very early on, I think we need to
understand what that looks like as well, because the solutions
will differ dramatically exactly. So let's take a look at
the numbers, because another really alarming data point that came
out of this new research is looking at and comparing
veterans versus non veterans suicide rates when it's broken down
(04:24):
by gender. So if you consider the fact, first of all,
we have to acknowledge that men across the board are
much more likely to take their own lives, so that
does affect some of the conclusions you might draw here. However,
this new data shows that male veterans are more likely
than male non veterans to take their own lives. So
(04:47):
if we want to pinpoint the impact that serving in
the military has on suicide rates, that's almost increase. That
makes you, as a dude, more likely to commit suicide.
That's a pretty alarming number, isn't it. Yeah, it's a
learning until you see the numbers on women, because when
it comes to women veterans compared to non veteran women,
(05:08):
women veterans are two hundred and fifty percent more likely
to take their own lives than non veteran women. That
is such a huge difference. That's so alarming exactly. And
another way of breaking these numbers down, because that percentage
comparison can be a little bit tricky, is by thinking
about suicide rates expressed by the number of annual deaths
(05:30):
for every one hundred thousand people in America. For male veterans,
that figure is thirty two, so thirty two deaths related
to suicide amongst men veterans for every one hundred thousand people,
versus only about twenty for non veteran men out of
every one hundred thousand, so thirty two versus twenty. The
(05:53):
numbers for women are away further apart. When it comes
to women veterans, the numbers twenty nine out of every
one hundred thousand people, whereas for non veteran women, just
civilian women, the numbers five, So five versus twenty eight
much bigger difference than thirty two versus twenty. Now, just
to add another wrinkle to that data, which I feel
(06:15):
like is already a little bit complicated, the thing is
is that because many veterans, like we said, are killing
themselves long after their military service, it's suspected that their
time and uniform may have little to do with the
reason why they've chosen to end their own life. Many
experts actually surmised that the farther away a veteran is
from their time of serving, the less and less their
(06:35):
suicide has to do with their time in the military.
So the same reason that civilians kill themselves, you know, depression, um,
mental health issues, difficult life circumstances, experts think that these
are the same reason that service people kill themselves, the
longer removed they are from when they served. And just
to sort of add on to that, most research has
been focused on men, these these older men who to
(06:57):
end their own lives, but they end up missing the
fact that younger women they're actually much more at risk
than older women when they come home from their military service.
Unlike men whose suicides predominantly happened later in life, women
that seem to be much more likely to commit suicide
in the first few years out of service. There was
a great quote from Allen's rambo. He writes, the rates
are highest among young veterans. The VA found in new
(07:19):
research compiling eleven years of data for women ages eighteen
to twenty nine, veterans killed themselves at nearly twelve times
the rate of non veterans. It's true the differences between
female veterans and civilian women in terms of suicide rates
are much more extreme in that early age bracket, the
eighteen to twenty nine year old bracket, as compared to
suicide rates amongst veteran women versus non veteran women later
(07:42):
on in life. And we are not trying to compare
women's suicide to men's suicide to say that one is
at all more important than the other. I just think
that I get a little bit enraged when I read
this stuff, because it is clear to me that we
are failing Our veterans. Are veterans who volunteer to serve
on behalf of our country, and I get on my
(08:04):
like patriotic soapbox and get really defensive, not just because
I got veterans in the family and who I love
and care for. But you know, there's a lot of
talk about broken Washington when it comes to veteran care
and the v A in particular, and this data is
a good first step in starting to improve suicide prevention efforts.
(08:27):
But it's clear to me that we are not doing
enough for men or women veterans to really provide them
with the lifelines they need in their moment of greatest need.
I couldn't agree more. I'm probably a little less ra
ra about the military than you are, Emily, just to
be you know, full disclosure. UM. I have a lot
of critical things to say about the military as an
institution in terms of our you know, foreign policy, But
(08:49):
my main thing is that we've got to support the
individual veterans. We have to support our service people. These
are the people who are putting their lives on the
line to keep us, to presumably keep us safe. They
makeing the toughest decisions, They're away from their families for
so long. I have so many service members in my family,
you know, being from the South, it was a huge
part of our upbringing was the military. Um, so many
(09:12):
of my cousins who couldn't pay for college, didn't have
this like easy avenue to sort of a comfortable middle
class life. Military service was how they did that. And
they sort of bought into this, into this dream or
this contract that if they signed up to put their
lives on the line to take care of America and
defend America, America would take care of them and defend them.
(09:32):
And when you look at this data, when you unpack it,
it's just very very clear we aren't doing that, exactly.
I couldn't have said it better. And I think when
you break it down based on class too, it gets me.
It gets my my more liberal, socialist e side up
in arms, just as much as my military loving side
off of myself up in arms, because we're basically recruiting
(09:54):
troops on like on the backs of our nation's least
financially stable populations exactly. And so, even as someone who
is very critical of the military, I the fact that
so many people feel so comfortable crapping on our service
members when so many of them are are working class
or don't have these these avenues to middle middle class
life like other folks might have. It just looks like
(10:16):
another way to shame and crap on the poor. Yeah,
and this is so not a partisan issue for me, um,
because I like to play both sides of the aisle
sometimes and I can be persuaded. But um, I guess
I'm a relatively moderate liberal person. But this to me
is so not a partisan issue at all. And I
would be curious to hear from our life I'm sure
we will hear from our listeners on this one. But
(10:39):
what we need to do next is really peel back
these layers a little bit more and understand, all right,
what are some of the underlying causes behind why so
many of our service members are choosing to end their
own lives. We're gonna go there right after this quick
break and a word from our sponsors, and we're back,
(11:03):
and we want to talk a little bit more about
some of the underlying causes behind this troubling information around
the increasing rates of women veterans and suicide in particular
as compared to non veteran women or the civilian population
of women in the United States. And the first thing
that comes to mind, at least I thought of right away,
(11:26):
was the impact of PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder.
We know that a lot of our veterans who have
come back from the wars in the Middle East that
we've been waging for quite some time now have been
struggling with PTSD, and that PTSD is relatively new diagnosis
with ever evolving treatment options. But what I found really
(11:46):
fascinating is that it appears women are diagnosed with PTSD
at higher rates than men, despite the fact that men
seem to experience more traumatic events on average than women do.
And that's according to a review of over twenty five
years of research in the November issue of the Psychological
Bulletin by the a PA to American Psychological Association. Well again,
(12:08):
I think that really just goes to show that when
you think about what kind of service members are the
ones who we're dealing with things like PTSD, I don't
feel like we think of women. Yet women are the ones,
according to this data, who are suffering from PTSD the most.
You're absolutely right, but the numbers are different between men
and women in the general population versus men and women
(12:29):
veterans in the general population. Women are twice as likely
as men to develop PTSD, Whereas, according to the v
A or retorneys, basically service members who are coming back
after they've become veterans, after they're no longer active duty
military members and they're seeking treatment at the VA, which
by the way, is a small population that like, not
every veteran comes back to the v A for care,
(12:51):
but amongst those who do, rates among men and women
diagnosed with PTSD are the same. And one thing that
I can't help but wonder when we look at all
this data is how is this impacted by the idea
that not every service member who is dealing with these
kinds of issues might choose to seek mental health? Right?
Are there folks out there who are struggling who don't
even get to the level of being studied or talking
(13:12):
to a mental health professional? And how might that impact
these numbers? I'm just very cuah. I think there's a
lot more research that needs to be done on this.
It kind of reminds me of the situation around a
d h D diagnosis, because we're all really socially conditioned
to think of boys and diagnosing them with a d
h D and that leads to lower diagnosis rates amongst
(13:33):
little girls or young women, but that's starting to change
and correct itself based on those those biases. So it's interesting. Yeah,
I mean, I I can't help but wonder how these
gender biases have impacted even who feels comfortable coming forward
with these issues, and how that impacts the numbers and
how we're studying it totally. And there's also a neurological
(13:53):
element here that I found really interesting. There was a
study done by Dr sab Inflict, a staff psychologist at
the San Francisco Via Medical Center, which she really looked
at how men and women learn fear, how they experienced
trauma and fear and what was fascinating. This is a
study published in the October twelve issue in the Journal
(14:13):
of Psychiatric Research. She took ten men and thirteen women,
all of whom had been diagnosed with PTSD that was
already across the board, true, and she showed these folks
various images on a computer screen and zapped them after
a certain after certain images. It's kind of like, yes,
she I don't know how this sounds like one of
(14:33):
those studies you read about in psychology one oh one
before ethics were involved in science, but I'm sure it
was just a minor zap. She hooked up electrodes to
their palms so they could uh measure the psychological response
how how like the sweat response, heart rate, see how
their brain was lighting up, And after certain images, the
test subject received a small electrical shock. Gradually the subjects
(14:59):
these people, we can and to associate particular images with
something unpleasant. In other words, they learned to anticipate the
impending shock or the danger, and this is something called
fear conditioning. What's fascinating is that the researchers found women
responded much more strongly to the visual cues than men
when they saw an image that they knew was going
(15:19):
to be followed by a shock. So it's almost like
we have higher rates of fear before a bad result
than our male counterparts do in terms of experiencing trauma, fear,
or stress. That sounds so right to me. I have
no trouble at all believing that that women knowing like, oh,
I know something stressful is coming, and that anticipation is
(15:41):
what generates that sweaty palm fear response. Right. I mean
it also, I mean we're drawing major correlations here that
are kind of a stretch. But I would also say
it makes me think of anxiety disorders being a much
more female thing, because that's really what that feels like
to me, is like the anxiety of an impending trauma
some kind. As an anxious person, I can tell you
that thinking about having to do something stressful oftentimes is
(16:04):
the thing. And then you do it and it takes
five seconds, it's not a big deal, But it was
that week of stressing yourself out about it that is
really the tough part. Now, even the researcher herself admits
that the study was small in terms of sample size,
and there's a ton more research that's needed because there
were lots of questions left unanswered. For instance, she says,
(16:25):
all our study participants had PTSD, so we couldn't arrive
at any conclusions regarding whether women, as a general rule,
condition more strongly than men do, or if it's a
difference found solely amongst men and women who already have PTSD.
And they didn't examine what may drive the gender differences
that they found, so it might be biological such as
(16:46):
hormones or neuropeptides that might mediate those effects. So there's
lots more research to be done, but PTSD as a
reason behind veterans suicide is not as simple as it seems,
even though their fromently connected and correlated. Women and men
experience PTSD differently, So we have to think about our
solutions and our suicide prevention programming in with the gender lens.
(17:10):
In my opinion, it seems like we come back to
that position so many times when we talk about mental
health issues or medical conditions, that we're not studying folks
all along the gender spectrum in the way that they
sort of deserve to be studied. That we study men
and then we use the findings from men to to
talk about the issue large or we study women and
(17:30):
we we use that we were not never hapens, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's usually men. It's usually men. But we don't we're
not yeah, Rara exactly, um no, but we're not allowing for,
you know, an inclusive understanding of how we present in
the world and our and our you know, the diversity
of people who live on this planet. We're not studying
(17:51):
in a way. We're not studying people in a way
that allows for that diversity, right, Because where do gender
nonconforming folks fit into all this data right, like if
we only think about it in term of the binary,
or even worse, just studying men and no one else,
we don't, we won't get anywhere exactly, although I have
been pleasantly surprised by how many folks tweeted at us
after which episode. Maybe it's multiple episodes now in which
(18:14):
we get on our soapbox about this very subject, saying
this professor at this medical school or this class at
my medical school had intersectionality built into the curriculum, and
I thought, dang, that is great to hear. Totally. I
think it's one of those issues that's slowly catching up
with where we are now, and I love hearing about
people's experiences where folks are getting it right so that
(18:35):
we can finally turn the tide on this issue. Absolutely
now jumping off to another underlying cause behind these truly
exceptional and not in a good way rates of suicide
amongst men and especially women veterans when compared to their
civilian counterparts. There's another theory out there that I have
to admit is pretty compelling despite being kind of hopeless,
(18:59):
uh in some ways, and that is the idea of
selection bias. There's a really interesting correlation between people who
volunteer to join the military and serve their country through
the armed forces versus people who were drafted. So what's
fascinating is that male veterans fifty and older, the vast
(19:21):
majority of whom served during the draft era which ended
in ninety three, had roughly the same suicide rates as
non veteran men in their age bracket. So this idea
that only younger male veterans who served in the all
volunteer force and women who have always been serving on
a volunteer capacity because we were never included in the draft.
(19:43):
It basically suggests that maybe suicide rates have more to
do with who chooses to join the military than what
happens during their service. Well that's exactly what Claire Hoffmeyer,
the v A epidemiologist who led this research says. Hoffmeyer
pointed to recent research showing that men and women who
join the military or actually more likely to have endured
things like difficult childhoods, including sexual and emotional abuse. So
(20:06):
really it could come down to who these folks are,
what their lives have looked like that end up impacting
whether or not they choose to end their lives. Other
studies have actually shown that army personnelity before enlistment had
elevated rates of suicidal thinking, attempts and various mental health problems.
Um but those studies did not break out the numbers
for women. You know what I think, as depressing as
(20:27):
that theory is, I think what it really points to
for me is that we as a nation have very
little in the way of mental health services accessible to
all Americans. People in need of mental health support have
very few places to turn, and one of which seems
to be the military. Absolutely, and honestly, I would even
take it a step further and say, not only in
(20:49):
this country do we need easier access to mental health
services across the board, but particularly for veterans. This is
exactly the kind of thinking that drives my own personal
ideology in terms of being, you know, anti war. If
we really cared about these people, if you really cared
about not signing them up for a life of hardship
and a life of dealing with really difficult things for
(21:09):
a very long time, up to and including possibly taking
your own life, we would not have policy that makes
allowances for endless war. We would be more careful about
how we how we're speaking about these people and what
we're putting them up against. And another wrinkle in terms
of why you might see women service members taking their
own lives sooner after returning from service is the huge,
(21:30):
huge epidemic of sexual assault and trauma in the military
that often goes without any kind of justice of any
kind exactly. In fact, this past May, there was a
new report released from the d o D showing that
showing i would say, mixed results when it came to
assault in the military and the epidemic that is women
(21:50):
veterans being assaulted and raped without having any recourse to
real justice in the system. The report found that the
number of service members reporting cases of sexual assault in
went up to six thousand, one seventy two compared to
the year prior at six thousand eighty two, all of
(22:12):
which was a huge increase, almost increase from when only
thirty six hundred or so cases were reported. What was
really weird was to see the d D kind of
double speak on this. They were saying, the fact that
more women are reporting sexual assault shows that there's increased
trust in the system, and isn't that great. It was
(22:34):
like a real ministry of double speak moment um because
I read that and scratched my head reading some of
the quotes from the administration saying how great that was.
But what they said was quote and this is Elizabeth
Van Winkle, the Assistant Secretary Defense, at a press conference, says,
we see the increase in rates of reporting as an
indicator of continued trust in our response and support systems.
(22:58):
But thank god for Senator cre Sston jilla Brand, who
said in a statement, the truth is that the scourge
of sexual assault in the military remains status quo. Today's
report disappointingly shows a flat overall reporting rate, which is true,
there's barely any increase, and a retaliation rate against survivors
that remains at an unacceptable six out of ten for
(23:19):
a third year in a row. Basically, six out of
ten women who reported said that they faced retaliation and
we're either squeezed out of the military or didn't find
any justice through the fact that they reported. Well, that
sure sounds like increased accountability and trust in the system
to me, Emily, I know right well, it was interesting.
The Senator Claire McCaskill, a senior member of the Armed
(23:40):
Services Committee, also a Democrat, said that these numbers show
real continued progress as a result of our historic reforms
to the military justice system. McCaskill and Jilla Brand have
been loud proponents of increased transparency, accountability, and justice for
women victims of sexual assault and raped the military. And
(24:00):
while I for sure know that there's been increased visibility
brought to these issues, that might have to do with
the increased confidence in reporting, this anonymous survey still found
that fifty eight percent of victims experienced reprisals or retaliation
for reporting. Not cool, not okay, But I will admit
that the numbers are mixed because this is an anonymous
(24:22):
survey delivered every two years, and the overall number of
service members who experienced some kind of sexual assault in
two thousands sixteen was fourteen thousand, nine hundred, down from
twenty thousand, three hundred two thousand fourteen. So that's that
is a significant you know, almost over five thousand less
(24:42):
assaults according to this anonymous survey, not that they're all
being reported. If you look at the reporting, four hundred
people said they were assaulted six thousand plus just over
six thousand reported. This is one of those issues where
it's hard for me to even trust the data because
I know what things like sexual thought and adding in
this code of military silence and sort of what it
(25:02):
looks like to be a you know, part of the
part of the like the brotherhood, and yeah, it's like
you don't turn on your fellow service member exactly. So
just knowing a little bit about that vibe makes it
really difficult from even trust these numbers, because for every
woman out there who does report, who even knows how
many don't you know, well, and you're saying, even in
(25:25):
this anonymous survey exactly, there's got to be people who
didn't admit it. And unfortunately, there is, without a doubt
a clear link between sexual assault, rape, that kind of trauma,
and suicidal thinking or ending up taking your own life.
And so we can't overlook how much of a deal
this is. And we really, I mean, we could talk
(25:46):
all day about the important work being done to end
sexual violence in the military and how much more needs
to happen on that front, but we should get Senator
Delibran up in here. Yeah, you should do that with
us sometimes totally call us. One other added wrinkle to
all of this that I really found just I couldn't
even really wrap my head around it, and as soon
(26:06):
as it came up in the research, I was kind
of both shocked that I had never thought of it
and sort of weirdly just terribly depressed. Is that women
attempts suicide more often than men but succeed less because
women usually use pills or other methods. So when you
look at women who have served in the military, they're
much more likely than their civilian counterparts to know how
(26:28):
to use a firearm, and so they're more likely perhaps
to successfully and their own lives using a firearm than
women who are non civilians who are using other methods.
When I heard this this stat I was so sort
of troubled and depressed, but also it kind of it.
(26:49):
I don't want to say it makes sense, but it's
sort of helps explain the inexplicable. It's true that veterans
Affairs researchers found that the female veterans who did and
their own lives chose to use guns compared with thirty
of civilian women. So basically, women veterans are much more
likely to use a firearm for those ends, and tragically
(27:13):
that sets them up to be more likely to actually
end their own life. Yeah, and I think not not
being someone who serves and not being someone who was
around firearms that much, I would never that would never
occur to me, but seeing it laid out in such
playing detail just crystallizes how sickening and depressing and unacceptable
(27:33):
this this issue is. Right. The one thing I would
add is that researchers say that this is enough to
have a small difference on explaining the massively increased risk
that are women veterans have for suicide than non veteran women.
But it's not the whole story. There's a lot more
going on now, one final underlying cause behind some of
(27:56):
these numbers. It makes it especially challenging I think for
women veterans navigating the transition into civilian life. Is this
idea of the double bind that women's service members face.
And what I mean by that is that whole solidarity
of the brotherhood that is the armed forces isn't something
(28:17):
that's super duper inclusive of women. Uh, they might not
ever feel like they truly belong in such a massively
male dominated environment. And yet on the flip side, when
these exact same women veterans re enter civilian life, they're
expected to be warm, loving, caring and ladylike in a
(28:39):
way that there they haven't been socialized or conditioned to
be for years, sometimes decades of serving the armed forces,
and that can make them feel like they don't have
any real sense of belonging or connection in either one
of those realms. That really sounds to me just like
what so many women go through, where you're never enough.
You're when you're in the military, arry you're not one
(29:00):
of the boys, you're not really accepted as tough enough
or good enough, and you're always proving yourself. And you know,
as we know from all the times you talk about
things like microaggressions, I can only imagine how that adds up,
bit by bit by bit by bit, how it just
grows and grows inside of you, giving you these signals
that you're not good enough, you're not worth it, all
of that, you're always being tested, and then after on
(29:22):
top of dealing with that, as if that is not enough,
going home and realizing the things that were prized when
you were in the military, that it made you good
at being in the military might not necessarily make you
good at being a quote unquote traditional woman or wife
or mother. Right, this idea of having to fit back
into this mold of civilian life and what civilian life
(29:43):
tells you it looks like to be a quote unquote
proper woman. How difficult that must be after then navigating
this entirely other mind field of the military. I can
imagine how that just makes you feel set up for
failure exactly. Danielle Simpson, who works the Vetera Affairs Crisis Hotline,
in speaking to NPR, she shared this winter, I spoke
(30:05):
with a female veteran who she had been in Afghanistan
seeing combat, and so she was really dealing with a
lot of PTSD and then coming home and being expected
to be the soft, caring, warm mother and wife that
she was expected to be in civilian life, and she
was really struggling with that transition. I mean, I can
imagine anybody would struggle with that transition. I think that
(30:28):
women in all kinds of different professions probably struggle with similar,
similar transitions. But then having it be the military is
probably just so much more intense and tough, and you know,
I just can't imagine trying so hard to fit in
in the military, which is this you know, brotherhood BROWI
hyper masculine, industry aggressive, And then what's supposed to be
(30:52):
good exactly, and then finding that those same things that
got you rewarded just make you not feel like you're
doing a good job in your civilian life and back
in the domestic sphere. Like I can imagine that it's
already so difficult to dovetail back into civilian life, that's
just another added challenge that women face that I think
is unique. And we know, even going back to the
(31:15):
very first episode that you and I put together for Stuff,
Mom never told you that having solid connections in your life,
feeling like you have friendships or loved ones who respect
and accept you for who you are, and feeling that
sense of love and belonging is so foundational to your
mental health that it does not surprise me that what
(31:36):
might seem like a trite issue of not feeling like
one of the guys in the armed forces and not
quite feeling like you belong in civilian life, it might
seem like not that big a deal, but it adds
up because it severs your ability to have deep, trusting,
vulnerable connections and to allow yourself to be fully seen
and respected. And on top of that, if you're someone
(31:58):
who is struggling or hard to a hard time. If
back in civilian life, you don't feel like you have
somebody that you can genuinely open up to, maybe you
don't feel like you can really talk to people about
what you're going through. I can imagine that's just another
burden in another way, that this is so complicated, and
we're going to talk through exactly what options do currently
exist for folks in that exact situation after we come
(32:19):
back from this quick break and we're back, and we're
going to talk through some of the resources and services
available to veterans who might be struggling with those feelings
of depression, PTSD or suicidal thoughts. So something to know
(32:40):
is that the v A is actually recently made some
significant progress in terms of healthcare delivery for women veterans. Currently,
v h A initiatives and programs include rolling out enhanced
women's healthcare, comprehensive primary care from an interested, proficient, and
designated women's health provider at any access point across facilities nationwide,
UM more mental health care for women veterans, um staffing
(33:01):
of every v A medical center without women veterans program
manager and training more than twelve primary care providers, and
things like women's health. And while that progress has been
made back in two thousand eleven when a lot of
sweeping reforms came through to make those improvements, unfortunately, more
recently than that, Congress has failed time and time again
(33:22):
to provide more resources to really solve these issues. So
back in two thousand fifteen, Hr. S Seven, or the
ruth More Act of was introduced and passed in the
House to really address the epidemic rates of sexual assault
happening in the military. That act would have allowed a
statement from a person who had been sexually assaulted to
(33:45):
serve as sufficient proof that the assault occurred in the
disability benefits claim process, because really, many many veterans were
being dishonorably discharged and not given their disability benefits if
they couldn't prosecute through the chain of command, which might
have been part of perpetuating assaults or being complicit and
(34:08):
turning the other cheek to assaults that were happening uh
in military court processes. So really this was enabling veterans
who were claiming assault for that claim alone to be
sufficient for them to gain disability benefits that they could
have otherwise had access to. Now, despite the fact that
to pass the House, it failed to do anything significant
(34:29):
in the Senate, where it was sent off to a
committee to basically be researched into oblivion. The same thing
happened a year later when HR fifteen, the Female Veterans
Suicide Prevention Act, which is much more directly pertaining to
this topic, was introduced and passed in the House. That
would have directed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to identify
(34:51):
mental health care and suicide prevention programs and metrics that
are specifically effective in treating women veterans as a part
of the evaluation of their suicide prevention programs. Basically, it
was saying, hey, while evaluating all the efforts you're making
on suicide preventions, we have to make sure that we're
looking at this with a gendered lens, which if we
(35:12):
have covered anything, hopefully that's far. In this episode, it's
become clear that that's significant, salient, and important. It passed
in the House on February nine and went off to
the Senate where it's stagnated in a committee and nothing
came from it. Well, that's what's so frustrating I think
about this issue is that I think both of these
programs sound great, but if we're not actually getting anywhere
(35:33):
on them, what's what difference does it make. I think
if we are actually interested in tackling this issue, which
as Americans we certainly should be, we gotta get somewhere.
We gotta get some traction. And I don't think the reforms,
as as good as they are from thousand eleven, is
going to cut it. I think that it really is
going to take some sort of meaningful action on the
part of our lawmakers to make sure that people that
were not sending people, you know, to preventable early graves
(35:56):
because they served for their country exactly and and ironically slash,
unfortunately slash. I'm not sure how to feel about this,
necessarily because the details aren't out yet. But Trump Alert
because Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States,
did in fact issue by executive order a requirement for
(36:19):
Veterans Affairs to take part in a total structural reorganization.
Now they say the v A says that they always
had plans to reorganize and restructure its workforce executive order
or not so. In the White House and the Office
of Management and Budget charge agencies to develop comprehensive reform
(36:39):
plans to reorganize. The VA says that they already had
the basics of their plan in mind, but as of
right now, as of this recording, those plans aren't super transparent.
We don't really know what a structural reorganization is going
to focus on or going to result in. It looks
like they're going to be focused on modernization, an efficiency,
(37:01):
and all that private sector talk for like potentially outsourcing things,
but who knows really what that means. To his credit,
VA Secretary David Schulkin did lay out all of his
top priorities thirteen top priorities to be specific, one of
which absolutely includes veterans suicide. He says combating veteran suicide
(37:23):
is vas top clinical priority, and he called it a
public health crisis. So there's there's some reason to be
hopeful and optimistic that in today's day and age, with
this administration, with this Congress, there's still the potential for
improvement here. I just hope that that improvement doesn't leave
women veterans behind. I hope it doesn't leave women veterans behind.
(37:44):
And further than that, I would say, I hope it's
not in a transparent way, because I one of the
things I hate so much about how we deal with
veterans in this country is that veterans issues are this
thing that we don't if you're a civilian, that we
don't even have to think about. And I think the
idea of this being done in a way that's not
transparent will only add to that notion that doesn't matter
what these people are going through, Like who cares what
(38:05):
veterans are going through? And I think that we as Americans,
all of us, need to be invested in terms of
how our country and our government is dealing with veterans
and the issues are going through. These aren't people that
we should be thinking about, as you know, off to
the sidelines, whose issues that we don't care about. These
are the people who are keeping us safe every day.
We have a vested interest in making sure that they
(38:27):
are being treated well and that they're being treated fairly
and that they have the support that they need. Otherwise,
what the heck are we doing? What is your bid
for Republicans? No? I mean, I want to make it
clear clearly, I hate the military, but I just love
seeing you know, it's a nuanced right, like like you know,
(38:47):
um you can be I I totally, and people might
write in about this and I have very hyper hyper
I have intense feelings about the military, obviously, but at
the end of the day, I think that we need
to be protecting are as people and I think that
what makes me the angriest is that we aren't protecting them.
In fact, we are failing them, and nobody seems to care.
(39:08):
And I think that for me, it begins and ends
with we need to be making sure that the folks
who are making the biggest sacrifices for us, whether or
not you're down with the military or not like that,
like that is accurate, but we are not having their
backs and that pisses me off. That makes me very angry,
even as someone who is oftentimes very critical of the
(39:28):
military love it. I couldn't have said it better myself.
The last thing I want to add to this conversation
is that if you are someone specifically a veteran who
is struggling with thoughts of suicide, or you know someone
who might be in that situation, the number one recommendation
that the v A and everybody out there has really
(39:51):
made prominent and upfront is calling the Veterans Crisis Line,
which can be found online at Veterans Crisis Line dot net.
Someone messed up there, you r L purchased there, but
Veterans Crisis Line dot net and it can also be
reached over the phone at one eight hundred to seven
three eight to five five and then pressing one. That's
(40:16):
seven three eight to five five and press one. Now
that is run by the v A. If that is
not your JAM, or you haven't had the best experience
with the v A, or don't want to go through
that vehicle. There are also some fantastic nonprofits out there
that are doing incredible work, and one that I found
really helpful in in compiling many different resources and methods
(40:41):
for rehabilitation for veterans who are struggling with adjusting to
civilian life or struggling with PTSD and depression or suicidal thoughts,
is called Mission twenty two. Mission two. The number twenty
two here is somewhat dated now, but it used to
be true that every day we lost twenty two veterans
to suicide, staggering awful. Now that number is is twenty,
(41:04):
but still far too high, and Mission twenty two really
focuses on understanding the nuance behind the underlying causes behind
veterans suicide and has a bunch of different solutions and
creative ways that they approach providing services to veterans. If
you get a mission twenty two dot com slash vet intel,
(41:26):
you'll find all of the ways that you can join
forces with many different nonprofits and advocacy organizations who have
your back. I just want our veterans listening to know
that we have your back. We have your backs, like
everyone should have their backs. Our country should have their backs.
Individuals should have their back, everybody should should be supporting
service people. The only folks missing that MAMO seems to
(41:47):
be Congress, but that puts you in a long line
of people that Congress has been failing lately. So I
hope that you know that we hear at stuff I've
never told you. UH want to see more veterans continue
to thrive and strive in our society together and to
feel not alone, especially women veterans who we know experienced
(42:10):
significantly higher rates of suicide than compared to our UH
non military or civilian women population. So if you know
a veteran and you haven't talked to her in a while,
get out there, reach out. Her life might not be
that different from yours after all, So being the kind
of person who facilitates connection can be a life saver.
And honestly, you never know what someone's going through. You
(42:32):
never know who's putting on a brave face because they
feel like that's what they have to do because they
need to be a strong person or a tough person. Honestly,
just checking in on our folks, I think is the
most important thing. Absolutely so, Smithy listeners, we want to
hear from you. We know that this is a big,
burly complicated subject matter that we tried to put together
in a pretty concise uh podcast for you, and I
(42:54):
know there's stuff we missed. I know there are points
that we want to add to the conversation, and that's
why it's so critical that you keep this conversation going
online and in our inbox. You can tweet at us
at mom Stuff Podcast, find us on Instagram at Stuff
Mom Never Told You, and as always, we love getting
your emails at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Hey, this is Emily, and this is and you're listening
to stuff Mom never told you. Today on the podcast,
we're talking through a truly troubling but important subject and
(00:26):
that has to do with the intersection of gender and
veteran suicide. Sadly, there was a new report released earlier
this week that we really wanted to jump on and
talk through and parse through to better understand why. There
are new numbers out showing that women veterans are much
more likely and the data on this is new in
(00:49):
terms of being able to make these conclusions, but women
veterans have been found to be much much more likely
than their non veteran counterparts to commit suicide to take
their own lives. And we just have to say, this
is a topic that a lot of people might find
hard to deal with and we totally understand. So big
trigger warning, this is going to be an episode that
deals with some heavy issues like sexual assault in the
(01:10):
military and self harm and suicide. So, um, if those
are issues that are complicated for you to deal with,
you should just know that that's going to be the
topic of today's show. Yeah, and we don't I mean,
we don't want to be downers about this, but I
feel strongly that it's important for us to talk about
these intersections and for us to talk about what we
(01:31):
can do more of as a country and as individuals
to help our veterans, men and women alike well, because
if we aren't talking about it, if we aren't studying it,
if you aren't getting research and data around it, there's
no way that we're going to be able to properly
tackle it. So, even though it's not a topic that
I think anybody necessarily likes talking about or finds cheery
or uplifting, is a topic that we have to deal
(01:52):
with because if we're not dealing with it, we're not
dealing with it right exactly. And what's interesting here is
that suicide is stereotypically associated with maleness, and in reality,
it's true that across the broader population, men or people
who identify as men are much much more likely to
commit suicide than women are across the board. But what
(02:15):
is troubling is this sort of old stereotype of the
older veteran who takes their own life, and of course
that by stereotypical we're talking about men here. There is
a lot of truth to that stereotype. The suicide rate
amongst middle age and older adult veterans remains the highest. Now,
Researchers have long thought that suicide rates were higher across
(02:38):
the board for older veterans, but because the v A
just completed a comprehensive examination of more than fifty five
million records from nineteen seventy nine through to two thousand fourteen,
they actually have new research that shows that statistic is
not true for women veterans, who are much more likely
(02:58):
to take their own lives shortly after their time and service,
and that finding has some serious ramifications for how we
implement suicide prevention programming. Yeah, I think when you look
at folks who serve and then and their own lives,
I do think there's this this stereotype that it's older
folks who have long been living with this traumas their
(03:20):
whole lives. Maybe they've dealt with alcoholism, maybe they've dealt
with you know, addiction issues, they've been exactly exactly. I
definitely think in pop culture you see this idea of
the older veteran who's been trying to get it together
and just suit of can't. And I think shifting the
way that we think about it along the lines of gender,
and it's more along the lines of what is actually
(03:41):
happening in reality. I think it's going to be instrumental
to how we come at this issue, because if you're
expecting veteran suicide to look like an older person who
has been, you know, dealing with it, slogging through for
thirty years and then this can't handle it anymore, but
in actuality, it can look like a woman who is
struggling to readjust her civilian life and can't find out
(04:03):
she can't. Very early on, I think we need to
understand what that looks like as well, because the solutions
will differ dramatically exactly. So let's take a look at
the numbers, because another really alarming data point that came
out of this new research is looking at and comparing
veterans versus non veterans suicide rates when it's broken down
(04:24):
by gender. So if you consider the fact, first of all,
we have to acknowledge that men across the board are
much more likely to take their own lives, so that
does affect some of the conclusions you might draw here. However,
this new data shows that male veterans are more likely
than male non veterans to take their own lives. So
(04:47):
if we want to pinpoint the impact that serving in
the military has on suicide rates, that's almost increase. That
makes you, as a dude, more likely to commit suicide.
That's a pretty alarming number, isn't it. Yeah, it's a
learning until you see the numbers on women, because when
it comes to women veterans compared to non veteran women,
(05:08):
women veterans are two hundred and fifty percent more likely
to take their own lives than non veteran women. That
is such a huge difference. That's so alarming exactly. And
another way of breaking these numbers down, because that percentage
comparison can be a little bit tricky, is by thinking
about suicide rates expressed by the number of annual deaths
(05:30):
for every one hundred thousand people in America. For male veterans,
that figure is thirty two, so thirty two deaths related
to suicide amongst men veterans for every one hundred thousand people,
versus only about twenty for non veteran men out of
every one hundred thousand, so thirty two versus twenty. The
(05:53):
numbers for women are away further apart. When it comes
to women veterans, the numbers twenty nine out of every
one hundred thousand people, whereas for non veteran women, just
civilian women, the numbers five, So five versus twenty eight
much bigger difference than thirty two versus twenty. Now, just
to add another wrinkle to that data, which I feel
(06:15):
like is already a little bit complicated, the thing is
is that because many veterans, like we said, are killing
themselves long after their military service, it's suspected that their
time and uniform may have little to do with the
reason why they've chosen to end their own life. Many
experts actually surmised that the farther away a veteran is
from their time of serving, the less and less their
(06:35):
suicide has to do with their time in the military.
So the same reason that civilians kill themselves, you know, depression, um,
mental health issues, difficult life circumstances, experts think that these
are the same reason that service people kill themselves, the
longer removed they are from when they served. And just
to sort of add on to that, most research has
been focused on men, these these older men who to
(06:57):
end their own lives, but they end up missing the
fact that younger women they're actually much more at risk
than older women when they come home from their military service.
Unlike men whose suicides predominantly happened later in life, women
that seem to be much more likely to commit suicide
in the first few years out of service. There was
a great quote from Allen's rambo. He writes, the rates
are highest among young veterans. The VA found in new
(07:19):
research compiling eleven years of data for women ages eighteen
to twenty nine, veterans killed themselves at nearly twelve times
the rate of non veterans. It's true the differences between
female veterans and civilian women in terms of suicide rates
are much more extreme in that early age bracket, the
eighteen to twenty nine year old bracket, as compared to
suicide rates amongst veteran women versus non veteran women later
(07:42):
on in life. And we are not trying to compare
women's suicide to men's suicide to say that one is
at all more important than the other. I just think
that I get a little bit enraged when I read
this stuff, because it is clear to me that we
are failing Our veterans. Are veterans who volunteer to serve
on behalf of our country, and I get on my
(08:04):
like patriotic soapbox and get really defensive, not just because
I got veterans in the family and who I love
and care for. But you know, there's a lot of
talk about broken Washington when it comes to veteran care
and the v A in particular, and this data is
a good first step in starting to improve suicide prevention efforts.
(08:27):
But it's clear to me that we are not doing
enough for men or women veterans to really provide them
with the lifelines they need in their moment of greatest need.
I couldn't agree more. I'm probably a little less ra
ra about the military than you are, Emily, just to
be you know, full disclosure. UM. I have a lot
of critical things to say about the military as an
institution in terms of our you know, foreign policy, But
(08:49):
my main thing is that we've got to support the
individual veterans. We have to support our service people. These
are the people who are putting their lives on the
line to keep us, to presumably keep us safe. They
makeing the toughest decisions, They're away from their families for
so long. I have so many service members in my family,
you know, being from the South, it was a huge
part of our upbringing was the military. Um, so many
(09:12):
of my cousins who couldn't pay for college, didn't have
this like easy avenue to sort of a comfortable middle
class life. Military service was how they did that. And
they sort of bought into this, into this dream or
this contract that if they signed up to put their
lives on the line to take care of America and
defend America, America would take care of them and defend them.
(09:32):
And when you look at this data, when you unpack it,
it's just very very clear we aren't doing that, exactly.
I couldn't have said it better. And I think when
you break it down based on class too, it gets me.
It gets my my more liberal, socialist e side up
in arms, just as much as my military loving side
off of myself up in arms, because we're basically recruiting
(09:54):
troops on like on the backs of our nation's least
financially stable populations exactly. And so, even as someone who
is very critical of the military, I the fact that
so many people feel so comfortable crapping on our service
members when so many of them are are working class
or don't have these these avenues to middle middle class
life like other folks might have. It just looks like
(10:16):
another way to shame and crap on the poor. Yeah,
and this is so not a partisan issue for me, um,
because I like to play both sides of the aisle
sometimes and I can be persuaded. But um, I guess
I'm a relatively moderate liberal person. But this to me
is so not a partisan issue at all. And I
would be curious to hear from our life I'm sure
we will hear from our listeners on this one. But
(10:39):
what we need to do next is really peel back
these layers a little bit more and understand, all right,
what are some of the underlying causes behind why so
many of our service members are choosing to end their
own lives. We're gonna go there right after this quick
break and a word from our sponsors, and we're back,
(11:03):
and we want to talk a little bit more about
some of the underlying causes behind this troubling information around
the increasing rates of women veterans and suicide in particular
as compared to non veteran women or the civilian population
of women in the United States. And the first thing
that comes to mind, at least I thought of right away,
(11:26):
was the impact of PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder.
We know that a lot of our veterans who have
come back from the wars in the Middle East that
we've been waging for quite some time now have been
struggling with PTSD, and that PTSD is relatively new diagnosis
with ever evolving treatment options. But what I found really
(11:46):
fascinating is that it appears women are diagnosed with PTSD
at higher rates than men, despite the fact that men
seem to experience more traumatic events on average than women do.
And that's according to a review of over twenty five
years of research in the November issue of the Psychological
Bulletin by the a PA to American Psychological Association. Well again,
(12:08):
I think that really just goes to show that when
you think about what kind of service members are the
ones who we're dealing with things like PTSD, I don't
feel like we think of women. Yet women are the ones,
according to this data, who are suffering from PTSD the most.
You're absolutely right, but the numbers are different between men
and women in the general population versus men and women
(12:29):
veterans in the general population. Women are twice as likely
as men to develop PTSD, Whereas, according to the v
A or retorneys, basically service members who are coming back
after they've become veterans, after they're no longer active duty
military members and they're seeking treatment at the VA, which
by the way, is a small population that like, not
every veteran comes back to the v A for care,
(12:51):
but amongst those who do, rates among men and women
diagnosed with PTSD are the same. And one thing that
I can't help but wonder when we look at all
this data is how is this impacted by the idea
that not every service member who is dealing with these
kinds of issues might choose to seek mental health? Right?
Are there folks out there who are struggling who don't
even get to the level of being studied or talking
(13:12):
to a mental health professional? And how might that impact
these numbers? I'm just very cuah. I think there's a
lot more research that needs to be done on this.
It kind of reminds me of the situation around a
d h D diagnosis, because we're all really socially conditioned
to think of boys and diagnosing them with a d
h D and that leads to lower diagnosis rates amongst
(13:33):
little girls or young women, but that's starting to change
and correct itself based on those those biases. So it's interesting. Yeah,
I mean, I I can't help but wonder how these
gender biases have impacted even who feels comfortable coming forward
with these issues, and how that impacts the numbers and
how we're studying it totally. And there's also a neurological
(13:53):
element here that I found really interesting. There was a
study done by Dr sab Inflict, a staff psychologist at
the San Francisco Via Medical Center, which she really looked
at how men and women learn fear, how they experienced
trauma and fear and what was fascinating. This is a
study published in the October twelve issue in the Journal
(14:13):
of Psychiatric Research. She took ten men and thirteen women,
all of whom had been diagnosed with PTSD that was
already across the board, true, and she showed these folks
various images on a computer screen and zapped them after
a certain after certain images. It's kind of like, yes,
she I don't know how this sounds like one of
(14:33):
those studies you read about in psychology one oh one
before ethics were involved in science, but I'm sure it
was just a minor zap. She hooked up electrodes to
their palms so they could uh measure the psychological response
how how like the sweat response, heart rate, see how
their brain was lighting up, And after certain images, the
test subject received a small electrical shock. Gradually the subjects
(14:59):
these people, we can and to associate particular images with
something unpleasant. In other words, they learned to anticipate the
impending shock or the danger, and this is something called
fear conditioning. What's fascinating is that the researchers found women
responded much more strongly to the visual cues than men
when they saw an image that they knew was going
(15:19):
to be followed by a shock. So it's almost like
we have higher rates of fear before a bad result
than our male counterparts do in terms of experiencing trauma, fear,
or stress. That sounds so right to me. I have
no trouble at all believing that that women knowing like, oh,
I know something stressful is coming, and that anticipation is
(15:41):
what generates that sweaty palm fear response. Right. I mean
it also, I mean we're drawing major correlations here that
are kind of a stretch. But I would also say
it makes me think of anxiety disorders being a much
more female thing, because that's really what that feels like
to me, is like the anxiety of an impending trauma
some kind. As an anxious person, I can tell you
that thinking about having to do something stressful oftentimes is
(16:04):
the thing. And then you do it and it takes
five seconds, it's not a big deal, But it was
that week of stressing yourself out about it that is
really the tough part. Now, even the researcher herself admits
that the study was small in terms of sample size,
and there's a ton more research that's needed because there
were lots of questions left unanswered. For instance, she says,
(16:25):
all our study participants had PTSD, so we couldn't arrive
at any conclusions regarding whether women, as a general rule,
condition more strongly than men do, or if it's a
difference found solely amongst men and women who already have PTSD.
And they didn't examine what may drive the gender differences
that they found, so it might be biological such as
(16:46):
hormones or neuropeptides that might mediate those effects. So there's
lots more research to be done, but PTSD as a
reason behind veterans suicide is not as simple as it seems,
even though their fromently connected and correlated. Women and men
experience PTSD differently, So we have to think about our
solutions and our suicide prevention programming in with the gender lens.
(17:10):
In my opinion, it seems like we come back to
that position so many times when we talk about mental
health issues or medical conditions, that we're not studying folks
all along the gender spectrum in the way that they
sort of deserve to be studied. That we study men
and then we use the findings from men to to
talk about the issue large or we study women and
(17:30):
we we use that we were not never hapens, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's usually men. It's usually men. But we don't we're
not yeah, Rara exactly, um no, but we're not allowing for,
you know, an inclusive understanding of how we present in
the world and our and our you know, the diversity
of people who live on this planet. We're not studying
(17:51):
in a way. We're not studying people in a way
that allows for that diversity, right, Because where do gender
nonconforming folks fit into all this data right, like if
we only think about it in term of the binary,
or even worse, just studying men and no one else,
we don't, we won't get anywhere exactly, although I have
been pleasantly surprised by how many folks tweeted at us
after which episode. Maybe it's multiple episodes now in which
(18:14):
we get on our soapbox about this very subject, saying
this professor at this medical school or this class at
my medical school had intersectionality built into the curriculum, and
I thought, dang, that is great to hear. Totally. I
think it's one of those issues that's slowly catching up
with where we are now, and I love hearing about
people's experiences where folks are getting it right so that
(18:35):
we can finally turn the tide on this issue. Absolutely
now jumping off to another underlying cause behind these truly
exceptional and not in a good way rates of suicide
amongst men and especially women veterans when compared to their
civilian counterparts. There's another theory out there that I have
to admit is pretty compelling despite being kind of hopeless,
(18:59):
uh in some ways, and that is the idea of
selection bias. There's a really interesting correlation between people who
volunteer to join the military and serve their country through
the armed forces versus people who were drafted. So what's
fascinating is that male veterans fifty and older, the vast
(19:21):
majority of whom served during the draft era which ended
in ninety three, had roughly the same suicide rates as
non veteran men in their age bracket. So this idea
that only younger male veterans who served in the all
volunteer force and women who have always been serving on
a volunteer capacity because we were never included in the draft.
(19:43):
It basically suggests that maybe suicide rates have more to
do with who chooses to join the military than what
happens during their service. Well that's exactly what Claire Hoffmeyer,
the v A epidemiologist who led this research says. Hoffmeyer
pointed to recent research showing that men and women who
join the military or actually more likely to have endured
things like difficult childhoods, including sexual and emotional abuse. So
(20:06):
really it could come down to who these folks are,
what their lives have looked like that end up impacting
whether or not they choose to end their lives. Other
studies have actually shown that army personnelity before enlistment had
elevated rates of suicidal thinking, attempts and various mental health problems.
Um but those studies did not break out the numbers
for women. You know what I think, as depressing as
(20:27):
that theory is, I think what it really points to
for me is that we as a nation have very
little in the way of mental health services accessible to
all Americans. People in need of mental health support have
very few places to turn, and one of which seems
to be the military. Absolutely, and honestly, I would even
take it a step further and say, not only in
(20:49):
this country do we need easier access to mental health
services across the board, but particularly for veterans. This is
exactly the kind of thinking that drives my own personal
ideology in terms of being, you know, anti war. If
we really cared about these people, if you really cared
about not signing them up for a life of hardship
and a life of dealing with really difficult things for
(21:09):
a very long time, up to and including possibly taking
your own life, we would not have policy that makes
allowances for endless war. We would be more careful about
how we how we're speaking about these people and what
we're putting them up against. And another wrinkle in terms
of why you might see women service members taking their
own lives sooner after returning from service is the huge,
(21:30):
huge epidemic of sexual assault and trauma in the military
that often goes without any kind of justice of any
kind exactly. In fact, this past May, there was a
new report released from the d o D showing that
showing i would say, mixed results when it came to
assault in the military and the epidemic that is women
(21:50):
veterans being assaulted and raped without having any recourse to
real justice in the system. The report found that the
number of service members reporting cases of sexual assault in
went up to six thousand, one seventy two compared to
the year prior at six thousand eighty two, all of
(22:12):
which was a huge increase, almost increase from when only
thirty six hundred or so cases were reported. What was
really weird was to see the d D kind of
double speak on this. They were saying, the fact that
more women are reporting sexual assault shows that there's increased
trust in the system, and isn't that great. It was
(22:34):
like a real ministry of double speak moment um because
I read that and scratched my head reading some of
the quotes from the administration saying how great that was.
But what they said was quote and this is Elizabeth
Van Winkle, the Assistant Secretary Defense, at a press conference, says,
we see the increase in rates of reporting as an
indicator of continued trust in our response and support systems.
(22:58):
But thank god for Senator cre Sston jilla Brand, who
said in a statement, the truth is that the scourge
of sexual assault in the military remains status quo. Today's
report disappointingly shows a flat overall reporting rate, which is true,
there's barely any increase, and a retaliation rate against survivors
that remains at an unacceptable six out of ten for
(23:19):
a third year in a row. Basically, six out of
ten women who reported said that they faced retaliation and
we're either squeezed out of the military or didn't find
any justice through the fact that they reported. Well, that
sure sounds like increased accountability and trust in the system
to me, Emily, I know right well, it was interesting.
The Senator Claire McCaskill, a senior member of the Armed
(23:40):
Services Committee, also a Democrat, said that these numbers show
real continued progress as a result of our historic reforms
to the military justice system. McCaskill and Jilla Brand have
been loud proponents of increased transparency, accountability, and justice for
women victims of sexual assault and raped the military. And
(24:00):
while I for sure know that there's been increased visibility
brought to these issues, that might have to do with
the increased confidence in reporting, this anonymous survey still found
that fifty eight percent of victims experienced reprisals or retaliation
for reporting. Not cool, not okay, But I will admit
that the numbers are mixed because this is an anonymous
(24:22):
survey delivered every two years, and the overall number of
service members who experienced some kind of sexual assault in
two thousands sixteen was fourteen thousand, nine hundred, down from
twenty thousand, three hundred two thousand fourteen. So that's that
is a significant you know, almost over five thousand less
(24:42):
assaults according to this anonymous survey, not that they're all
being reported. If you look at the reporting, four hundred
people said they were assaulted six thousand plus just over
six thousand reported. This is one of those issues where
it's hard for me to even trust the data because
I know what things like sexual thought and adding in
this code of military silence and sort of what it
(25:02):
looks like to be a you know, part of the
part of the like the brotherhood, and yeah, it's like
you don't turn on your fellow service member exactly. So
just knowing a little bit about that vibe makes it
really difficult from even trust these numbers, because for every
woman out there who does report, who even knows how
many don't you know, well, and you're saying, even in
(25:25):
this anonymous survey exactly, there's got to be people who
didn't admit it. And unfortunately, there is, without a doubt
a clear link between sexual assault, rape, that kind of trauma,
and suicidal thinking or ending up taking your own life.
And so we can't overlook how much of a deal
this is. And we really, I mean, we could talk
(25:46):
all day about the important work being done to end
sexual violence in the military and how much more needs
to happen on that front, but we should get Senator
Delibran up in here. Yeah, you should do that with
us sometimes totally call us. One other added wrinkle to
all of this that I really found just I couldn't
even really wrap my head around it, and as soon
(26:06):
as it came up in the research, I was kind
of both shocked that I had never thought of it
and sort of weirdly just terribly depressed. Is that women
attempts suicide more often than men but succeed less because
women usually use pills or other methods. So when you
look at women who have served in the military, they're
much more likely than their civilian counterparts to know how
(26:28):
to use a firearm, and so they're more likely perhaps
to successfully and their own lives using a firearm than
women who are non civilians who are using other methods.
When I heard this this stat I was so sort
of troubled and depressed, but also it kind of it.
(26:49):
I don't want to say it makes sense, but it's
sort of helps explain the inexplicable. It's true that veterans
Affairs researchers found that the female veterans who did and
their own lives chose to use guns compared with thirty
of civilian women. So basically, women veterans are much more
likely to use a firearm for those ends, and tragically
(27:13):
that sets them up to be more likely to actually
end their own life. Yeah, and I think not not
being someone who serves and not being someone who was
around firearms that much, I would never that would never
occur to me, but seeing it laid out in such
playing detail just crystallizes how sickening and depressing and unacceptable
(27:33):
this this issue is. Right. The one thing I would
add is that researchers say that this is enough to
have a small difference on explaining the massively increased risk
that are women veterans have for suicide than non veteran women.
But it's not the whole story. There's a lot more
going on now, one final underlying cause behind some of
(27:56):
these numbers. It makes it especially challenging I think for
women veterans navigating the transition into civilian life. Is this
idea of the double bind that women's service members face.
And what I mean by that is that whole solidarity
of the brotherhood that is the armed forces isn't something
(28:17):
that's super duper inclusive of women. Uh, they might not
ever feel like they truly belong in such a massively
male dominated environment. And yet on the flip side, when
these exact same women veterans re enter civilian life, they're
expected to be warm, loving, caring and ladylike in a
(28:39):
way that there they haven't been socialized or conditioned to
be for years, sometimes decades of serving the armed forces,
and that can make them feel like they don't have
any real sense of belonging or connection in either one
of those realms. That really sounds to me just like
what so many women go through, where you're never enough.
You're when you're in the military, arry you're not one
(29:00):
of the boys, you're not really accepted as tough enough
or good enough, and you're always proving yourself. And you know,
as we know from all the times you talk about
things like microaggressions, I can only imagine how that adds up,
bit by bit by bit by bit, how it just
grows and grows inside of you, giving you these signals
that you're not good enough, you're not worth it, all
of that, you're always being tested, and then after on
(29:22):
top of dealing with that, as if that is not enough,
going home and realizing the things that were prized when
you were in the military, that it made you good
at being in the military might not necessarily make you
good at being a quote unquote traditional woman or wife
or mother. Right, this idea of having to fit back
into this mold of civilian life and what civilian life
(29:43):
tells you it looks like to be a quote unquote
proper woman. How difficult that must be after then navigating
this entirely other mind field of the military. I can
imagine how that just makes you feel set up for
failure exactly. Danielle Simpson, who works the Vetera Affairs Crisis Hotline,
in speaking to NPR, she shared this winter, I spoke
(30:05):
with a female veteran who she had been in Afghanistan
seeing combat, and so she was really dealing with a
lot of PTSD and then coming home and being expected
to be the soft, caring, warm mother and wife that
she was expected to be in civilian life, and she
was really struggling with that transition. I mean, I can
imagine anybody would struggle with that transition. I think that
(30:28):
women in all kinds of different professions probably struggle with similar,
similar transitions. But then having it be the military is
probably just so much more intense and tough, and you know,
I just can't imagine trying so hard to fit in
in the military, which is this you know, brotherhood BROWI
hyper masculine, industry aggressive, And then what's supposed to be
(30:52):
good exactly, and then finding that those same things that
got you rewarded just make you not feel like you're
doing a good job in your civilian life and back
in the domestic sphere. Like I can imagine that it's
already so difficult to dovetail back into civilian life, that's
just another added challenge that women face that I think
is unique. And we know, even going back to the
(31:15):
very first episode that you and I put together for Stuff,
Mom never told you that having solid connections in your life,
feeling like you have friendships or loved ones who respect
and accept you for who you are, and feeling that
sense of love and belonging is so foundational to your
mental health that it does not surprise me that what
(31:36):
might seem like a trite issue of not feeling like
one of the guys in the armed forces and not
quite feeling like you belong in civilian life, it might
seem like not that big a deal, but it adds
up because it severs your ability to have deep, trusting,
vulnerable connections and to allow yourself to be fully seen
and respected. And on top of that, if you're someone
(31:58):
who is struggling or hard to a hard time. If
back in civilian life, you don't feel like you have
somebody that you can genuinely open up to, maybe you
don't feel like you can really talk to people about
what you're going through. I can imagine that's just another
burden in another way, that this is so complicated, and
we're going to talk through exactly what options do currently
exist for folks in that exact situation after we come
(32:19):
back from this quick break and we're back, and we're
going to talk through some of the resources and services
available to veterans who might be struggling with those feelings
of depression, PTSD or suicidal thoughts. So something to know
(32:40):
is that the v A is actually recently made some
significant progress in terms of healthcare delivery for women veterans. Currently,
v h A initiatives and programs include rolling out enhanced
women's healthcare, comprehensive primary care from an interested, proficient, and
designated women's health provider at any access point across facilities nationwide,
UM more mental health care for women veterans, um staffing
(33:01):
of every v A medical center without women veterans program
manager and training more than twelve primary care providers, and
things like women's health. And while that progress has been
made back in two thousand eleven when a lot of
sweeping reforms came through to make those improvements, unfortunately, more
recently than that, Congress has failed time and time again
(33:22):
to provide more resources to really solve these issues. So
back in two thousand fifteen, Hr. S Seven, or the
ruth More Act of was introduced and passed in the
House to really address the epidemic rates of sexual assault
happening in the military. That act would have allowed a
statement from a person who had been sexually assaulted to
(33:45):
serve as sufficient proof that the assault occurred in the
disability benefits claim process, because really, many many veterans were
being dishonorably discharged and not given their disability benefits if
they couldn't prosecute through the chain of command, which might
have been part of perpetuating assaults or being complicit and
(34:08):
turning the other cheek to assaults that were happening uh
in military court processes. So really this was enabling veterans
who were claiming assault for that claim alone to be
sufficient for them to gain disability benefits that they could
have otherwise had access to. Now, despite the fact that
to pass the House, it failed to do anything significant
(34:29):
in the Senate, where it was sent off to a
committee to basically be researched into oblivion. The same thing
happened a year later when HR fifteen, the Female Veterans
Suicide Prevention Act, which is much more directly pertaining to
this topic, was introduced and passed in the House. That
would have directed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to identify
(34:51):
mental health care and suicide prevention programs and metrics that
are specifically effective in treating women veterans as a part
of the evaluation of their suicide prevention programs. Basically, it
was saying, hey, while evaluating all the efforts you're making
on suicide preventions, we have to make sure that we're
looking at this with a gendered lens, which if we
(35:12):
have covered anything, hopefully that's far. In this episode, it's
become clear that that's significant, salient, and important. It passed
in the House on February nine and went off to
the Senate where it's stagnated in a committee and nothing
came from it. Well, that's what's so frustrating I think
about this issue is that I think both of these
programs sound great, but if we're not actually getting anywhere
(35:33):
on them, what's what difference does it make. I think
if we are actually interested in tackling this issue, which
as Americans we certainly should be, we gotta get somewhere.
We gotta get some traction. And I don't think the reforms,
as as good as they are from thousand eleven, is
going to cut it. I think that it really is
going to take some sort of meaningful action on the
part of our lawmakers to make sure that people that
were not sending people, you know, to preventable early graves
(35:56):
because they served for their country exactly and and ironically slash,
unfortunately slash. I'm not sure how to feel about this,
necessarily because the details aren't out yet. But Trump Alert
because Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States,
did in fact issue by executive order a requirement for
(36:19):
Veterans Affairs to take part in a total structural reorganization.
Now they say the v A says that they always
had plans to reorganize and restructure its workforce executive order
or not so. In the White House and the Office
of Management and Budget charge agencies to develop comprehensive reform
(36:39):
plans to reorganize. The VA says that they already had
the basics of their plan in mind, but as of
right now, as of this recording, those plans aren't super transparent.
We don't really know what a structural reorganization is going
to focus on or going to result in. It looks
like they're going to be focused on modernization, an efficiency,
(37:01):
and all that private sector talk for like potentially outsourcing things,
but who knows really what that means. To his credit,
VA Secretary David Schulkin did lay out all of his
top priorities thirteen top priorities to be specific, one of
which absolutely includes veterans suicide. He says combating veteran suicide
(37:23):
is vas top clinical priority, and he called it a
public health crisis. So there's there's some reason to be
hopeful and optimistic that in today's day and age, with
this administration, with this Congress, there's still the potential for
improvement here. I just hope that that improvement doesn't leave
women veterans behind. I hope it doesn't leave women veterans behind.
(37:44):
And further than that, I would say, I hope it's
not in a transparent way, because I one of the
things I hate so much about how we deal with
veterans in this country is that veterans issues are this
thing that we don't if you're a civilian, that we
don't even have to think about. And I think the
idea of this being done in a way that's not
transparent will only add to that notion that doesn't matter
what these people are going through, Like who cares what
(38:05):
veterans are going through? And I think that we as Americans,
all of us, need to be invested in terms of
how our country and our government is dealing with veterans
and the issues are going through. These aren't people that
we should be thinking about, as you know, off to
the sidelines, whose issues that we don't care about. These
are the people who are keeping us safe every day.
We have a vested interest in making sure that they
(38:27):
are being treated well and that they're being treated fairly
and that they have the support that they need. Otherwise,
what the heck are we doing? What is your bid
for Republicans? No? I mean, I want to make it
clear clearly, I hate the military, but I just love
seeing you know, it's a nuanced right, like like you know,
(38:47):
um you can be I I totally, and people might
write in about this and I have very hyper hyper
I have intense feelings about the military, obviously, but at
the end of the day, I think that we need
to be protecting are as people and I think that
what makes me the angriest is that we aren't protecting them.
In fact, we are failing them, and nobody seems to care.
(39:08):
And I think that for me, it begins and ends
with we need to be making sure that the folks
who are making the biggest sacrifices for us, whether or
not you're down with the military or not like that,
like that is accurate, but we are not having their
backs and that pisses me off. That makes me very angry,
even as someone who is oftentimes very critical of the
(39:28):
military love it. I couldn't have said it better myself.
The last thing I want to add to this conversation
is that if you are someone specifically a veteran who
is struggling with thoughts of suicide, or you know someone
who might be in that situation, the number one recommendation
that the v A and everybody out there has really
(39:51):
made prominent and upfront is calling the Veterans Crisis Line,
which can be found online at Veterans Crisis Line dot net.
Someone messed up there, you r L purchased there, but
Veterans Crisis Line dot net and it can also be
reached over the phone at one eight hundred to seven
three eight to five five and then pressing one. That's
(40:16):
seven three eight to five five and press one. Now
that is run by the v A. If that is
not your JAM, or you haven't had the best experience
with the v A, or don't want to go through
that vehicle. There are also some fantastic nonprofits out there
that are doing incredible work, and one that I found
really helpful in in compiling many different resources and methods
(40:41):
for rehabilitation for veterans who are struggling with adjusting to
civilian life or struggling with PTSD and depression or suicidal thoughts,
is called Mission twenty two. Mission two. The number twenty
two here is somewhat dated now, but it used to
be true that every day we lost twenty two veterans
to suicide, staggering awful. Now that number is is twenty,
(41:04):
but still far too high, and Mission twenty two really
focuses on understanding the nuance behind the underlying causes behind
veterans suicide and has a bunch of different solutions and
creative ways that they approach providing services to veterans. If
you get a mission twenty two dot com slash vet intel,
(41:26):
you'll find all of the ways that you can join
forces with many different nonprofits and advocacy organizations who have
your back. I just want our veterans listening to know
that we have your back. We have your backs, like
everyone should have their backs. Our country should have their backs.
Individuals should have their back, everybody should should be supporting
service people. The only folks missing that MAMO seems to
(41:47):
be Congress, but that puts you in a long line
of people that Congress has been failing lately. So I
hope that you know that we hear at stuff I've
never told you. UH want to see more veterans continue
to thrive and strive in our society together and to
feel not alone, especially women veterans who we know experienced
(42:10):
significantly higher rates of suicide than compared to our UH
non military or civilian women population. So if you know
a veteran and you haven't talked to her in a while,
get out there, reach out. Her life might not be
that different from yours after all, So being the kind
of person who facilitates connection can be a life saver.
And honestly, you never know what someone's going through. You
(42:32):
never know who's putting on a brave face because they
feel like that's what they have to do because they
need to be a strong person or a tough person. Honestly,
just checking in on our folks, I think is the
most important thing. Absolutely so, Smithy listeners, we want to
hear from you. We know that this is a big,
burly complicated subject matter that we tried to put together
in a pretty concise uh podcast for you, and I
(42:54):
know there's stuff we missed. I know there are points
that we want to add to the conversation, and that's
why it's so critical that you keep this conversation going
online and in our inbox. You can tweet at us
at mom Stuff Podcast, find us on Instagram at Stuff
Mom Never Told You, and as always, we love getting
your emails at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
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