Marine Cpl. Clay Hunt watched a fellow Marine die after being shot in the throat by a sniper in Iraq. Weeks leader Hunt was also shot in the wrist by an enemy marksman. But as the Washington Post explains, Hunt didn’t let that stop him from deploying again to Afghanistan after completing Marine sniper school in 2008. During that deployment, “sixteen Marines and a Navy corpsman were killed in combat, and scores were wounded.”
Sadly, the story gets more tragic as the setting transitions off the battlefields of the Middle East and back to the United States.
The Post explains what happened next:
Hunt left the Marine Corps afterward. He struggled with depression, panic attacks and post-traumatic stress but threw himself into veterans advocacy and humanitarian work, even traveling to Haiti in 2009 with other Marine veterans to help after a devastating earthquake.
Then it was over. Hunt, 28, committed suicide in Houston in 2011. Family and friends said he had been battling the Department of Veterans Affairs to get his disability rating upgraded from 30 percent, as he struggled to find employment and his marriage unraveled. He locked himself in his apartment and turned a gun on himself.
Stories like Hunt’s, which have become disturbingly common, are what make revelations that mental health patients at Central Alabama’s VA Health System must wait an average of 67 days to receive care particularly troubling.
“I hope people understand how serious a problem it is for veterans in need of mental health care to have to wait more than two months for an appointment,” said Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL2), who has been pushing for VA reforms in recent months. “That is obviously a disservice to veterans, but it is also a major public safety issue for Central Alabama. To think that a soldier returning from Afghanistan with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has to wait two months for an appointment to get care he needs and deserves – it’s a disgrace.”
And this week, Roby is urging her House colleagues to address the problem by advancing a bill named for Cpl. Hunt.
More from the Post:
The Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for America Veterans Act calls for independent evaluations of all mental health-care and suicide-prevention programs in VA and the Defense Department, a student loan repayment program that would offer up to $120,000 per year to recruit psychiatrists who commit to working for VA, and a program that would take back unneeded prescription drugs from patients at VA facilities.
The bill has received bipartisan support and Roby plans to speak in favor of it on the House floor Tuesday morning.
“Many soldiers return from battle with wounds we cannot see,” she said. “It might be uncomfortable for some to talk about, but the fact is we have a high suicide rate among veterans: 22 veterans commit suicide every day. That rate is even higher for young, male veterans, the very type that are returning from war right now.
“We don’t need to do anything to exacerbate the problem by making it harder for veterans to get the treatment they need. That’s why this week the House is taking action to pass The Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for America Act.”
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— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) December 3, 2014
