Petty Officer 3rd Class Brandon Caserta took off his protective helmet, walked beneath the spinning rear tail rotor of an a HM-60S helicopter at a Virginia naval station — and jumped into the air until the spinning rotor ended his torment.
Army veteran Jacob Brown — haunted by violent delusions — took note of the two armed Gila County sheriff’s deputies on his front porch in Beaver Valley. He picked up his shotgun, walked out onto the porch, ignored commands to drop the weapon and turned the muzzle of the shotgun toward Deputy John French. The deputy fired in self-defense — killing Brown.
“Jeffrey” survived fierce action and the loss of many friends during his combat tours in Vietnam. He locked all that away when he returned to civilian life. He raised a family. Established a rewarding career. You could only get him to talk about any of it on the second or third drink in a dim bar. He had it bottled and sealed. But the scenes of the wrenching evacuation of American troops from Afghanistan after yet another failed military intervention brought it all back. Laying awake all night, the images replayed on a loop. He grimly waited for the panic to subside, dismayed to find the darkness waiting for him — not gone after all.
Three veterans — three windows into the dark plague of military service — suicide. The specter of suicide haunts both active duty troops and veterans long after they return home. Sometimes, it’s connected to the trauma of combat. But in Arizona, veteran suicide rates are twice as high as civilian rates — without regard to whether the veteran has seen combat.
Fortunately, the federal government has taken new steps to curtail the stunning increase in active duty suicides, which have risen 40% in the past five years. Last year 377 active duty members killed themselves. So far since the attacks of 9/11, the military has lost four times as many people to suicide as to war operations.
The Brandon Act requires the military to provide immediate, confidential treatment and counseling for any service member struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts. The bill was sponsored by Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly — a 25-year Navy veteran and former astronaut and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton. The bill requires the military to provide confidential mental health services without retaliation or impact on the service record.
The law grew out of the dogged efforts of Brandon Caserta’s parents, who said his suicide was triggered by harassment and the taunting of a superior officer. Brandon wrote anguished letters and several suicide notes, imploring his parents to do something about a military culture that included harassment and harsh treatment for perceived failure or weakness.
The Brandon Act will provide help for active duty personnel — but veterans in civilian life face their own crisis, which remains largely unaddressed — especially in rural areas. Veterans Affairs offers mental health treatment, but lines are long and treatment often fragmented. That’s especially true in rural areas, with no VA centers, a reliance on contract service providers, and less specialized services.
Tragically, in Arizona military veterans commit suicide at roughly twice the rate as civilians at every age and in almost every racial group. The only exception to that generalization concerns Native American veterans, who commit suicide at a lower rate than comparable Native American civilians, according to a just-completed analysis by researchers from Arizona State University of some 6,000 veteran suicides between 2015 and 2019.
The suicide rate for male veterans stood at 52 per 100,000 annually between 2015 and 2019, compared to 33 per 100,000 among non-veterans. For female veterans, the 22 per 100,000 suicide rate compares to 10 per 100,000 for women who have not served in the military.
White males have by far the highest suicide rate — both for veterans and non-veterans, followed by blacks, Native Americans and then Hispanics.
Gila County has among the state’s highest suicide rates for veterans — 61 per 100,000.
Navajo County’s rate stands at 47 per 100,000 — just below the national average. That could reflect the county’s large number of Navajo and Apache veterans — who have a lower rate.
Apache County has a veteran suicide rate of 32 per 100,000, with an even larger share of Native American veterans.
Nonetheless, in Gila, Apache and Navajo counties — veterans were a stunning three times more likely to commit suicide as non-veterans, thanks to low suicide rates in the general population.
Mohave County’s had the highest rate in the state at 78 while Graham County had the lowest rate — 9.2 per 100,000.
Access to guns may play a role. Some 79% of suicides by Arizona veterans involve guns, according to the study. By contrast, only 54% of non-veteran suicides involve guns. This also helps account for the lower suicide rate among women generally, since women use guns less often. Other methods of suicide aren’t as likely to succeed — and often people who survive a suicide attempt get help or recover from their depression.
The second leading method is hanging or suffocation — used by 26% of civilians, but only 11% of veterans, according to the ASU study.
The report showed another characteristic of suicide among veterans that helps account for the higher rate.
In the civilian population, the suicide rate remains relatively consistent by age. It rises from 19 per 100,000 in ages 18-34 to about 23 for ages 55-64 and then declines to 16 for those 75 and older.
The pattern is quite different for veterans, according to the ASU analysis. It peaks at 76 per 100,000 for ages 18-35, then drops to about 41 for ages 55-64 — just when it’s peaking among civilians. The rate then rises steeply, hitting 62 per 100,000 over the age of 75.
Many veterans say they silently struggled against depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and readjusting to civilian life. Often, they have trouble finding help. Perhaps more often, they try to live up to a macho, “suck-it-up” military culture, that disdains weakness and strives to control or smother feelings of sorrow or vulnerability.
Brandon Caserta
Caserta joined the Navy right out of high school, determined to become a Navy SEAL.
But the high school athlete got dropped from SEAL school after he broke his leg. He wound up based in San Diego working in the candy and snack shack — the gedunk. In letters home, he wrote about his struggles — including interactions with a commanding officer who repeatedly taunted him about washing out of the SEALS and demolitions training programs.
In June of 2018, he walked out to the tarmac and turned to the flight captain and said: “I’m sorry for what you’re about to see,” his mother, Teri Caserta told Stars and Stripes. “He jumped not once, but twice, finally making fatal contact with the blade.”
In a letter to his parents before he killed himself, Brandon wrote “I love you both SOOO MUCH!!” and begged them not to blame themselves for his action. However, he also asked them to help change the Navy culture — and punish the Navy commanders who bullied him, hazed him and ignored his pleas for help. “Ruin these people’s lives as much as they ruined mine!!” he wrote, according to the Stars and Stripes article.
His father, a 22-year Navy veteran, had tried in vain to get help for his son before that fatal day. After his son’s death, Patrick Caserta lobbied anyone who would listen for the next two years.
Sen. Kelly agreed to sponsor the bill that passed in December, which he dubbed the Brandon Act. Moulton sponsored the bill in the House, with Republican Rep. Debbie Lasko as a co-sponsor.
In a statement, Brandon’s parents said, “Words cannot express the gratitude we have for Rep. Seth Moulton, Sen. Mark Kelly and their entire staff for tirelessly advocating for our military service members. We cannot bring Brandon back, but the Brandon Act will honor our son in the way he would want.”
Jacob Brown
Jacob Brown moved to Rim Country in hopes of getting a fresh start, but his demons followed him here.
A military veteran, Brown suffered from increasingly serious bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to his wife. He took anti-anxiety medications, drank heavily and smoked pot — but wasn’t getting care through Veterans Affairs — unable to navigate the system, said his wife.
In the days before his death, he became paranoid and delusional.
On June 16, afraid his psychosis would slide into violence, his wife took their baby and went to stay with a friend.
Later that day, the sheriff’s office received a call to come to Beaver Valley Estates — where they found a silver car stuck in a ditch and brown lying on the ground. He grew so violent and disruptive that officers put him in a patrol vehicle. On the way to jail, he kicked out a window in the patrol car. Eventually, officers shackled him and took him to the hospital, where he remained combative.
Deputies released him the next morning — but the sheriff’s office put out a warning to be cautious in dealing with him, noting he’d been discharged from the military for violent behavior.
Now alone in his home, Brown paced about with a big knife strapped to his hip and carrying a large shotgun, muttering, sobbing and talking to himself.
Eventually, his uncle called the sheriff — warning that his nephew was suicidal and had PTSD.
On June 18, French and another deputy went to the house for a welfare check. The deputies approached the porch with their guns at the ready, as Brown watched them approach on video cameras. The confrontation on the porch lasted mere moments. The officers fired 10 shots. Brown never pulled the trigger.
The Gila County Sheriff’s Office declared it a justified shooting. French, 60, a 26-year veteran, developed symptoms of PTSD himself. He sought a disability retirement, which was initially denied — but then approved on an appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.
The long struggle
Of course, most veterans finish their service and return to civilian life without brushes with suicide or PTSD. A recent meta-analysis of 38 studies found PTSD rates ranging from 1% to 35%, depending on the definition. A 2017 study of 6,000 US veterans found 13% had been diagnosed with PTSD, compared to an estimated 7% of civilians.
Moreover, although suicide rates among veterans in Gila, Apache and Navajo County are three times the civilian rate — they’re still low — about 6 out of 1,000.
So most veterans are more like “Jeffrey,” who have lived long, productive lives as civilians — even after suffering traumatic events during combat.
But still — sometimes the images crowd forward.
And sometimes, they need help to get through that long night.
Help that’s all too often hard to find.
Comments are closed.