MINUTES for 2019-05-28 FINAL - Laserfiche WebLink

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Veterans Advisory Committee Minutes May 28,2019 Page 5 Chair Doolittle: Tom is peaking in on them every now and then because he's close with them. Wery: They're going to carry that guilt with them for the rest of their lives. It's like kids, when the parents get divorced, the kids blame themselves. Chair Doolittle: Oh yeah, well at 10 and seven they are at vulnerable ages. But in the Veeteran community the rate of suicide is 50%higher than in the general public. Wery: Schofield Barracks around Christmas time, I had one kid, he had all kinds of drugs problems,parents were all messed up„ he was a dud. I told the Platoon Sergent"I want a man with him over this weekend, 24 hours a day. This guy's at risk." Monday morning, we had one guy missing, I knew who it was. The Platoon Sergent had gone on leave that Saturday, so I told the Section Sergent, "Where were you Friday? (inaudible) Take the squad go up there and look at the range. They found him against a tree, blew his head off. I called them back,just stay there guard the place. I called the MPs. He came back, I said, "I told your Platoon Seregent I want somebody assigned to this guy 24 hours a day. Who was it?" The Platoon Sergent didn't tell him. I said ok, fine. I fired the guy. It was his fault, if he'd done what I told him, the kid wouldn't have hhad the chance to do what he did. Nahakuelua: I wanted to add to Maurice's query about why do Veterans go down that dark path, another speculative hypothesis is that veterans we came from a job where there was a sense of purpose, high adrenaline, comradery, everyone works as a team, Carolle Brulee-Wilson: Deb, I have to go now. (Carolle leaves phone conference). Lewis: Ok, thanks. Bye. Nahakuelua: And then we go into the civilian world and we deliver newspapers. Yeah, there's a sense of purpose, you're getting the newspaper out but there's no comradery, there's not that much of a sense of prupose, where's the adrenaline rush. It's kind of like a question of self worth. "Man, I did this, now I'm doing this." I talked with one of the VA Social Workers and we were talking about the scope or the common topic for veterans that trigger an aggressive response or trigger something where they get mad. What it is is,people not knowing their jobs. They end up working with people in the civilian world that are not efficient, they're not as quick and responsive as people in the military were. This triggers a response and they start to get annalitical and start to compare their life in the military, how more high speed it was and in the civilian world its not high speed and that's where the dark path can go down, a sense of self worth gets measured. Chair Doolittle: I'm confused by...anyway I just thought we needed to talk about it. Does anyone have anything lse to add?