We all get a warm glow when we hear the airline gate agent inviting active-duty service members to board early. What isn’t said, isn’t known, is that some of those young men and women will die eventually by their own hands, and at nearly three times the rate of civilians in the same under-34 age group.
Veterans, particularly young veterans, men and women, are in danger of walking on the dark side in terrible isolation, despair and misery — in a darkness so extreme it defies comprehension by those who are in the light.
These veterans are the victims of traumatic brain injury, a hard-to-diagnose and treat brain wounding by the force of shock waves from explosive blasts. The shock waves can cause minute tears or other damage that medical imaging and blood tests can’t detect in a living patient.
Frank Larkin, who heads up Warrior Call, an organization devoted to helping TBI-afflicted veterans, knows the problem in a savagely personal way: His son, Ryan, a decorated Navy SEAL, took his life at age 29. He was a victim of TBI.
Larkin is a former Navy SEAL, a police officer, a Secret Service agent and a U.S. Senate sergeant at arms. He is a passionate advocate for research, understanding, compassion and giving veterans an ecosystem in which they can feel secure, comforted and part of a tribal continuance that extends from the time in service to life in the civilian world.
Thomas Bowman, a Marine for 30 years and later the Republican staff director of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and deputy secretary of the Veterans Administration in the first Trump administration, knows the issue from its institutional challenges.
Larkin and Bowman joined me and my colleague, Adam Clayton Powell III, on the PBS and SiriusXM Radio program “White House Chronicle” to discuss a disturbing uptick in veteran suicide from TBI.
When a sufferer seeks and receives medical help, the chances are it will be treated as psychological rather than physical in origin. Bowman stresses how important records and continuity of monitoring are. He believes artificial intelligence will be a great asset in managing veterans’ medical histories and ensuring they are seen as a continuum, not a series of disjointed episodes.
Larkin says his son became withdrawn and “stopped smiling, as if a mask had been put over his face.” He knew his problem, but he was unable to overcome it, even with a dedicated support system. Before he took his life, Ryan asked that his brain be donated to science.
TBI victims can suffer from frequent headaches, sleeplessness, brain fog and shortened tempers. Drugs, alcohol and homelessness complicate and worsen their predicament.
Larkin says young veterans can find themselves “in a very dark place, suffering invisible wounds.”
Things are getting worse on the battlefield. Drones are an increased source of brain damage. These, Larkin and Bowman point out, are unlike mortars and improvised explosive devices: They explode on the same plane as soldiers’ heads.
Not all the damage takes place on the battlefield. Some of it can be part of routine training, the frequent exposure to everything from a soldier’s weapon to artillery and mortar live-fire practice.
Larkin and Bowman speak of the good work at the Department of Veterans Affairs, but also of the numbing bureaucracy there. Larkin regrets the loss of 30,000 personnel at the VA in recent government trimming.
Nonetheless, the rate of veteran suicide is going up, according to the latest VA report. The overall rate for veterans of all ages, based on data through 2023, was 35.2 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 34.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2022. The suicide rate for civilians of all ages was half the rate.
Suicide among veterans is the 12th-leading cause of death for veterans overall but the leading cause of death for veterans under 45, the VA report found.
As a former homicide detective, Larkin believes these suicides are underreported. He says this is sometimes to protect a family and for other reasons.
All suicides are terrible but particularly when the victims are young and have come to that bleak place because they served.
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