Linda Bean Knows the Hard Work is Just Beginning

Linda Bean knows that the battle is not over.

On Tuesday, Dec. 20, U.S. Rep. Rush Holt announced that had he secured $40 million in the final 2012 federal budget to support military suicide prevention efforts.  The House and the Senate approved Holt’s funding late last week, and it will now be signed into law by the president. 

The funding will support the activities that Holt originally proposed in the Sergeant Coleman S. Bean Individual Ready Reserve Suicide Prevention Act, which was named in honor of the East Brunswick soldier who died by suicide after serving in Iraq.

The victory is a big one for the Bean family, who lost their son, Coleman, to suicide in 2008. But Linda Bean knows there is still a lot of work to do if it means reaching members of the military who need this vital counseling,

“A key use of the money is to expand outreach for the programs that they have,” said Bean. “One of the things that is most clear is that there are some strong and helpful programs out there but, there is very little advertising or marketing, and its not enough to, say ‘just go to our web site.’ There has to be affirmative marketing for these resources.”

Of the funds, $20 million will support suicide prevention efforts for active-duty soldiers and reservists at the Department of Defense, while the other $20 million will support veterans’ suicide prevention at the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Activities funded may include outreach to vulnerable soldiers and veterans through TV, radio, and social media, as well as direct suicide intervention efforts.

Holt originally secured the funding through two separate amendments:  the bipartisan Holt-Runyan Amendment, coauthored with Rep. Jon Runyan (R-NJ), to the 2011 Veterans Affairs appropriations bill; and the Holt Amendment to the 2011 Defense appropriations bill.  The two bills were later combined by the Senate.

While Bean says it is thanks to Rep. Holt's work that the funding has come, it is was only after he visited the Beans that the effort began.

“He was very kind and his question was, ‘is there anything I can do,’ and we kind of thought that through,” said Bean.

Sgt. Coleman S. Bean joined the U.S. Army when he was 18. On Sept. 5, 2011, he graduated from basic training and went through Jump School with the 173 Airborne. His group opened the northern front at the start of the Iraq War in 2003. After four years he returned home, but was called back to duty  under Individual Ready Reserve Status and assigned to a Unit of the Maryland National Guard. After another tour of duty, he came home and over the course of a summer, unraveled, before committing suicide that September, said his mother.

Following the tragedy, the Beans eventually met many of their son’s contemporaries, many of whom were going through the same things their son had, and many others who told them the wonderful things he’d done.

“So after Coleman died, we knew a lot of his young contemporaries were in at least as bad shape, and we spent a lot of time tracking down mental health services,” she said. “We were just saddened by a lot of what we’d encountered and it made us wonder if there’s not a better way to get services to people who need them, and we believe very strongly that it’s critically important…that there be strong, visible public partnerships between military mental health organizations and civilian mental health organizations and that both the military and VA publicize those programs.”

In other words, Bean wants to get this important information into the hands of veterans as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

According to The Center for a New American Security, from 2005 to 2010, service members took their own lives at a rate of approximately one every 36 hours.

While suicides in the Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard have been relatively stable and lower than those of the ground forces, U.S. Army suicides have climbed steadily since 2004.

The Army reported a record-high number of suicides in July 2011 with the deaths of 33 active and reserve component service members reported as suicides. Suicides in the Marine Corps increased steadily from 2006 to 2009, dipping slightly in 2010.

It is impossible, given the paucity of current data, to determine the suicide rate among veterans with complete accuracy. However, the VA estimates that a veteran dies by suicide every 80 minutes. Moreover, although only 1 percent of Americans have served in the military, former service members represent 20 percent of suicides in the United States.

“It has been horrible to read the monthly suicide numbers because we know what every one of those numbers means,” said Bean. “It means somebody just got a phone call and their life is just turned inside out. Coleman was smart, he was funny, he had a lot of resources, he was a good soldier, but he cared a great deal for the men and women with whom he served, and when he was on his second tour of duty, he got his sergeant stripes. I said, 'That’s great, that’s wonderful, but what does that actually mean in terms of your day to day job? What does it mean?’ And he told me, “mom, it means what it always means, it means you get your guys home alive.”

Of course, Linda is always to give out information if she thinks it will help. To that end, here are a few resources she has provided.

Both GiveAnHour, www.giveanhour.org, and The Soldier's Project, www.thesoldiersproject.org, provide counseling on a confidential basis and both have a national reach.

GiveAnHour has therapists across the county that have donated their time and they are easy to find with a zip code search.

Therapists with the Soldier's Project can connect in person, with Skype, by email or other methods.

Both are particularly useful for people who may be geographically distant from military or VA services, said Bean.

In addition, the National Veteran's Foundation runs a hotline and live-chat service staffed by veterans who are trained in crisis management. That number is 1-888-777-4443. Visit them at www.nfv.org.

If a vet is looking for peer support, Vets4Vets is available at 520-319-5500, or www.vets4vets-us.org.

For Guardsmen and members of the Reserves there is Vets4Warriors at www.vets4warriors.com or 1-855-838-8255 or 1-855-VET-TALK.