Unseen, Mortal Wounds: The Struggle to Prevent Veteran Suicides

By IBBY CAPUTO

Source: WGBH News
Published: Thursday 07 March, 2013

Don Purington is a living testament to the difficulty soldiers face when they return from combat.

“You can’t undo the training when you get home,” Purington said. “You know, you’re trained to kill. You come home, they don’t teach you how to shut that switch off or transition those skills of combat to civilian life.”

Purington lives on the South shore. He joined the Marine Corps in 2005, and did two tours in Iraq. While on patrol, an IED - improvised explosive device - exploded and he suffered a brain injury and nerve damage. After being honorably discharged in 2009, he returned to Massachusetts: a 29-year-old with chronic pain.

“I came home with a screaming oxycontin addiction,” Purington said. “The VA, the military, everybody just wanted to give the pain medication out. It was their way of getting rid of me, but it was all I cared about, it was all I needed. I could stay in the house. I didn’t need to go out, all I needed was cigarettes and those pain pills. It destroyed my marriage. It destroyed a good two and a half years of my life, that medication.”

Mortally Wounded

Another marine, Jeffrey Lucey is also a testament to the difficulty soldiers face when they return from combat. Only he is no longer living. Lucey committed suicide on June 22, 2004.

“As far as we were concerned, Jeffrey was mortally wounded in Iraq,” said Lucey’s mother, Joyce Lucey.

Jeffrey turned 22 the day before the war started in March 2003. His troop was part of the initial invasion. They crossed the Kuwait border into Iraq, where Jeffrey’s responsibility was to drive a Humvee.

Four months later, he came home to Belchertown, Mass., "physically unscathed," as his father, Kevin Lucey put it. But within a few months, he started showing signs of post-traumatic stress, and it became obvious that his wounds were unseen, but deep.

“It was like another person came home in my son’s body,” Joyce said.

A Preventable Problem

The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs estimates that 22 veterans take their own lives every day in America. The majority of veterans who kill themselves are men between the age of 50 and 59, but younger soldiers are in no way immune to the despair and hopelessness that leads to suicide.

“In the military there are checkpoints,” said Barry Feldman, a psychiatry professor at UMass Medical School in Worcester. “Thirty, 60, 90 days, where soldiers returning from combat are followed up upon. But beyond that is an area of concern. Thirty, 60, 90 days doesn’t necessarily capture what might be happening, and reintegration can be a significant problem for many people. Over time, things can get worse.”

Feldman said suicide is a preventable problem.

“If we can identify people who are at risk, if we can get them help, then in all probability, we can help that person prevent them from ending their life,” he said.

Warning Signs

For Kevin and Joyce Lucey, it wasn’t that easy. Jeffrey came home from Iraq years before the Defense Department and Veteran Affairs launched their own suicide prevention campaigns.

“We had been told by the marines that there is going to be a period of readjustment, so if let’s say you want him to go somewhere and he says he would prefer not to, then try to honor his wishes,” Kevin said.

Jeffrey didn’t want to talk about Iraq. Sometimes he would vomit before breakfast, but he didn’t make much of it.

When Kevin and Joyce retell their son’s story, they do so warning sign to warning sign. The first time they suspected something serious was going on was on Christmas Eve, 2003. Jeffrey stayed home while the rest of the family went to his grandmother’s house. Midway through the evening, Jeffrey’s younger sister, Debbie, came home to check on him.

“Jeff had tears in his eyes, and the only time we know that he took off his dog tags – except for the day he died – he took them off and tossed them at his sister and stated that he was nothing more than a murderer,” Kevin said.

Kevin and Joyce rushed home, but Jeff had been drinking, and wouldn’t talk.

“Then the very next day, Christmas Day, Jeff was fine,” Kevin said. “It was like Christmas Eve never occurred.”

“I think that was one of the issues with Kevin and I,” Joyce said. “You know, if Jeff was okay the next day, it would be like, ‘Okay – this was just an incidence; he’s going to be alright.’”

Feldman said one common myth about suicide is that it just kind of happens – out of the blue.

“Now the research shows exactly the opposite,” Feldman said. “Nobody typically wakes up on a given day and says its cold out, its cloudy out, I’m going to kill myself. There are things that can build up to that. That’s why the warning signs are important to know.”

Jeffrey displayed several warning signs. He began to isolate and drink excessively. But it wasn’t until his 23rd birthday that the symptoms of post-traumatic stress really exploded.

“So what happened was that there was a hyper vigilance, there was the lack of sleep, his appetite change, there was an anger,” Kevin said.

The family doctor put Jeffrey on Prozac and Klonopin, medicines prescribed for depression and panic disorders. For a short time, it seemed to help, but then his symptoms got worse.

He got in fights with his girlfriend, totaled the car, drank more.

Jeffrey’s parents encouraged him to go to the VA for help.

“But the power of stigma – Jeff was totally terrified of the unit ever finding out that he was weak, that he needed help -- and so Jeff refused, and that refusal continued until mid-May when we were just so overwhelmed,” Kevin said.

Kevin and Joyce had Jeffrey involuntarily committed to the VA hospital, but he was discharged three and a half days later. They tried to return him a week after that, but he refused to go inside. Then, on the afternoon of June 22nd, Jeff hanged himself in the basement of his parent’s house. The night before he died, he shared a tender moment of surrender with his father.

“He asked if he could sit in my lap as he did when he was a small boy, and we rocked for about 45 minutes in silence,” Kevin said.

For All the Jeffrey's Out There

For the last nine years, since their son’s death, Kevin and Joyce have been advocating in their son’s memory.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Joyce said. “It really is. And this isn’t just about Jeffrey. This is about all the Jeffrey’s that are out there. You know they feel the same way.”

Their influence – through the telling of their son’s story – has led to an outreach effort in Massachusetts called SAVE – Statewide Advocacy for Veterans’ Empowerment. Kevin Lambert works for the Massachusetts Department of Veteran Services. He was part of the team that started the SAVE program in 2008.

“What we had to do is kind-of step back and really look at how we could prevent before it gets to that crisis situation,” Lambert said. “We were very fortunate that the Lucey family came in and met with us."

Lambert said the meeting with Jeffrey's family was an amazing experience.

"What they left us with is if you meet the needs of the veterans, and you don't make the veteran meet the needs of the system, they feel we could have possibly helped save Jeffrey's life,” he said.

With SAVE, trained veterans reach out to other veterans and help them navigate their transition back to civilian life. If the program had been around while Jeffrey was struggling, a fellow veteran – perhaps even Lambert himself – might have driven to Jeffrey’s house to connect with him – as equals, as brothers, who had both experienced the horrors of war.

That is what Lambert did for Don Purington, the veteran with the screaming oxycontin addiction. Purington was sent to jail, after being caught forging prescriptions for the drug.

“I sat in jail for three months, because I couldn’t post bail and it was out of six or seven courts that I had charges for prescription fraud,” Purington said. “I figured my life’s over. There’s no help. This is it. I’m done.”

But then Lambert showed up, and the SAVE team convinced the courts that Purington wasn’t writing prescriptions to make money. Purington went to rehab for six months, then to a PTSD unit.

“It took a year of hard work, hard hard work to get my life somewhat back on track,” Purington said. “It was its own battle in itself.”

Now Purington, who has been sober for three years, works for Lambert, doing outreach. He told me about how he even crossed state lines once and drove to Rhode Island in the middle of a night to work with a suicidal veteran.

“When I started this job, it was so hard not to see myself in ever client,” Purington said. “Because they are all going through it.”

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