Mental Health Struggles with Those in the Marines- Christian Callaghan

Today, we had a speaker come in and introduce us to the documentary that he was creating, centered around the idea of suicide among Marine veterans and active service members. It was such an eye opening opportunity to actually hear from someone whose friends had died in front of his eyes. He began discussing with us about his after Marine life as well:

    After the Marine Corp., he could not relate to many people and was looking for something to help him. His panic attacks began one night when he was in the shower and started to freak out at the thought of moving. 

They were forced by the Marines to be angry and full of rage. They had to kill the families of people. No normal human who is not psychotic is capable of killing a person and not feeling the effects of that killing later in life. Whether this is in the form of PTSD or otherwise, our past will catch up to us. This is what happened in many of the cases with the Marines, as the deaths they were forced to cause came up in the form of PTSD. What was the way that many of these guys got out of this mental pit: suicide. 

The burden and pain of having to take other people's lives and seeing your closest friends die in front of you led to Marines wanting to take their own lives. According to statistics, on average, 17.6 veterans take their lives every day. My explanation for all of this is to hope that we as a society can provide for the people who have laid down their lives for us in return for the freedom of our nation. The least we can do for these people is to help keep them mentally stable and return them to the state they were before the war, because we do not need any more Marines with their own blood on their hands.

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