Once a day an active member of the military commits suicide. Before today is over 22 more Veterans: men and women, who have survived long deployments and possible combat, will die by suicide.

Like with every column I write, I try my best to understand the subject that I am writing about. I research, I read, I ponder the evidence and I draw conclusions. I’ve never found something so challenging as writing about Veterans and the mental health issues that they face.

It’s not that there isn’t enough information on the topic that makes writing about Veterans challenging, it is relating to a group of people whose experiences, thoughts and emotions can only be understood by those who have been to war. No movie, no book, no first hand account can make a deep enough of an impression upon the uninitiated so as to make us understand their thoughts, their struggles and the ongoing battle that is peacetime living.

For many Veterans peace is harder than the chaos of war. In a war you move from mission to mission from task to task –your training and instincts take over. Long after the buzz and the noise of war are gone, there is a lingering and lonely silence. Silence does not leave clues as to which direction a soldier should take or what comes next after the noise has died down.

For peacetime a soldier receives no training.  War wipes away all those so-called normal instincts their old self once had. Upon returning home a hero’s life can become completely unmanageable.

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