continuing in the years to come.Many veterans served in Vietnam between 1969 and 1973. Many statistics on suicide seemly display the facts of the Vietnam War. The “...mortality rate in Vietnam Veterans was 17% higher than for Vietnam-era veterans during the first five years following discharge” (Kelley, 1997). Michael Dean served in Vietnam for only two years and nearly never participated in combat. In 1986, he killed his wife, 3 children, and himself in an apparent murder-suicide. In a suicide note found, he wrote “we the veterans, widows, and children of veterans are a forgotten group” (“More Victims of Vietnam“, 33). More support continues to pour in from the government and presidents, yet no one takes the blame. Fifty-eight thousand men and women died in the Vietnam War and over one hundred and fifty thousand have committed suicide soon thereafter. The future of war holds nothing but death and destruction. Suicide should be the last thought on any veterans’ mind coming home from any war-related battle.America has not won the Vietnam War. Veterans that have returned home, only come to realize the expieriences they have gone through and seem to have nothing to be proud of. Many of these soldiers return to their families unfamiliar and tainted. Statistics have shown that post-traumatic stress disorder has been found more likely to affect veterans who were exposed to combat, opposed to soldiers who didn’t participate on the battlefield. The rate of suicide for a person with depressive disorders are eighty times higher than that of a normal male. Even those amputated in the war were thirty-seven percent more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the population (Bullman and Kang, 662-67). So many different situations add to the thoughts of suicide for many Vietnam veterans, yet all factors begin with war. Those wounded more than two times are 95% more likely to commit su...
