While other families were looking forward to the holidays, Rachel
Clinger was awaiting news of her husband, who had disappeared a week before Christmas from his New Jersey military base.
The wait did not last long -- Marine Sgt. Tristan Clinger’s body was found
days later.
Clinger, she said, had battled depression but feared he would be discharged if he got help.
He is not the only one.
Experts who work with both active-duty
military and veterans say the stigma of mental illness -- whether combat stress, depression, anxiety or substance abuse --
continues to be an impediment to treatment, often leading to tragic consequences. With over 2.5 million men and women having
served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade, plus thousands more currently stationed overseas, experts say it’s
more critical than ever to make sure those who need it find a pathway out of despair.
“We had six suicide calls into our office in one day -- one day,” said Paul Rieckoff, founder and head
of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the largest service organization focused solely on the recent generation
of vets. He’s been working diligently for over a decade to connect them with available services and lobbying on the
Hill for better access to care.
“I think we have made
some headway, but there is a long way to go and at the end of the day, there is still stigma and fear of being labeled ‘a
broken, damaged veteran,’” he told FoxNews.com.
He
believes the problem is worse than assumed, particularly among young veterans. The most frequently used statistic -- 22 veterans
committing suicide a day -- is based on older numbers, and does not take into account veterans who fall through the cracks,
he said.
“It’s much higher. ... We think we are
losing a lot of young people,” Rieckoff said.
Case in
point: The suicide of Tyler Schlagel, 29, a former Marine corporal, on Dec. 9 was the 14th in his military unit since the
group returned from Afghanistan in 2008. According to a recent report, even more have attempted suicide, one three days after Schlagel’s
death. No one knew how badly he was suffering, even his closest friends and family.
“They set up all these hotlines and things for guys to get help,” David Gwinn, a Navy corpsman who served
with Schlagel and had survived his own suicide attempts – twice, told The New York Times. “But what do you do
when most of the guys don’t want help?”
Stigma can manifest itself in different ways, said Dr. Wendy Tenhula, national mental health director for the integrated
VA/DoD mental health program. Servicemembers and veterans fear there will be professional and social repercussions for
seeking help. They don’t trust medications or therapy or both. They are embarrassed, and chafe against “being
seen as or being labeled as weak or incompetent or dangerous,” she said.
Sometimes the stigma is so internalized the individual refuses to see they need help. Many self-medicate with alcohol
and drugs; they withdraw, and avoid contact.
“The resistance
to getting help takes many forms but it comes down to this -- it hurts, and they don’t know how to come in and get that
help and to sit with that hurt,” said Dr. Tracy Stecker, a research health scientist at the VA in Charleston, S.C.,
who engages in mental health outreach.
According to figures
provided to FoxNews.com, nearly 1 million active-duty servicemembers were diagnosed with at least one mental disorder between
2000 and 2011, and the numbers increased as the wars wore on. From 1998 to 2011, 2,990 servicemembers took their own
lives while on active-duty.
But like Sgt. Clinger, whose funeral services were held in Ohio on Jan. 8, the majority (55 percent) of victims were never deployed overseas, suggesting
mental health in the military is more than just a combat-related issue. Clinger’s death is under investigation.
Starting in 2008, the Defense Department has waged a multi-pronged war against
stigma, in a bid to reach more people.
Rules were changed: the
military began embedding mental health providers in units, and took the mental health question off of the questionnaire for
security clearances. They launched an anti-stigma campaign called “Real Warriors. Real Battles. Real Strength” to convey that emotional struggles following wartime service are common,
and not an indicator of weakness. They invested in research and outreach.
“Most servicemembers who seek and receive psychological health support improve and remain on active duty. Because
getting help often leads to a full recovery, seeking mental health care is not a career ender,” Navy Capt. Anthony Arita,
director of the Deployment Health Clinical Center at the DOD, said in a statement. That said, he acknowledged “not all
servicemembers and veterans who need treatment receive it, due to a variety of barriers and challenges,” including stigma.
Meanwhile, the VA has embarked on a similar outreach campaign, including the Veterans Crisis Hotline, which took over 2 million calls since its inception in 2007. In 2011, the
VA launched an interactive website called “Make the Connection” to help vets, families and communities with resources and strategies for
self-diagnosis and accessing treatment.
According to the VA,
more than 1.5 million vets sought help for PTSD and other mental health problems in fiscal 2014, including over 536,000 for
substance abuse, and 535,000 for PTSD (of those, over 141,000 were recent veterans).
“Something we do know is that more and more veterans are coming to the VA for mental health care,” said
Tenhula. “We can’t point for sure to a reduction in stigma, but we do know that more veterans are seeking care
and more veterans are reaching out and helping each other.”
