The PTSD Foundation of America’s vision is to drastically reduce the Veteran suicide rate.
The Veteran’s Administration (VA) reports that we are losing 20.6 Veterans every day to suicide. They believe the actual daily suicide rate is much higher than what is being reported. Only one-third of American Veterans seek health care from the VA. If a Veteran is not involved in a VA program, then the VA would not have a way to account for that Veteran in the overall total statistics.
Furthermore, that number does not consider the many Veterans who die each day from alcohol and drug-related incidents that were fueled by an attempt to self-medicate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We estimate that the actual daily suicide rate is between 25 – 30 every day.
The PTSD Foundation of America focuses specifically on combat trauma because they believe that Veterans dealing with combat specific trauma deserve a safe environment to share their experienced trauma with other combat Veterans. They also believe that PTSD in combat Veterans contributes to the 20+ a day suicide rate.