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The other thread about the ongoing catastrophe of the situation in Iraq created by the US, got me to thinking about what might be the real, hidden, cost of the US' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Kind of strikes home the insidious nature of warfare that you could leave the scene of a battle without a single external mark on your body - seemingly uninjured - but your mind might have received a 'fatal blow' that results in years down the line that you decide to kill your family and yourself, for example:
That's 230,000 potential ticking timebombs in the US, with easy access to firearms - perhaps this is the real enemy within...?
And their spouses:
The Invisible War on the Brain
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, between 2001 and 2014 some 230,000 soldiers and veterans were identified as suffering from so-called mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), mostly as a result of exposure to blast events.
KILLEEN, Tex. — An apparent murder-suicide involving the husband and the two children of a soldier who had recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan is providing a new twist to a persistent problem at the sprawling Fort Hood Army base here.
Soldier suicides have been dismayingly familiar in recent years at Fort Hood, which is north of Austin. In 2010, officials reported that 22 soldiers had taken their own lives that year, including a murder-suicide involving a sergeant and Iraq war veteran who shot his wife before killing himself with the gun.
But this week, Fort Hood has been struggling to make sense of a suicide involving not a service member, but one’s family.
Soldier suicides have been dismayingly familiar in recent years at Fort Hood, which is north of Austin. In 2010, officials reported that 22 soldiers had taken their own lives that year, including a murder-suicide involving a sergeant and Iraq war veteran who shot his wife before killing himself with the gun.
But this week, Fort Hood has been struggling to make sense of a suicide involving not a service member, but one’s family.
And their spouses:
She said Army leaders told her that they lacked the ability to track suicide attempts by family members of Army personnel because there were too many to track. “I was stunned,” Ms. Mullen said, according to The Associated Press.
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