Twenty two veterans each day commit suicide. That figure is based on statistics gathered in 2014 by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and reported on in today’s USA Today.

Although veterans make up less than 9 percent of the U.S. population, veteran suicides account for 18 percent of all U.S. suicides.

Troubled by these statistics, veterans in Delaware and friends and family members of veterans have formed the Interfaith Veterans Workgroup. The mission of IVW is to help veterans come home. For many, coming home isn’t easy. Dan Sheehan, a former Marine who struggled with PTSD, describes veterans’ transitioning from battle consciousness to civilian consciousness in his book, Continuing Actions. This transition involves recovery in three stages: physical, emotional, and spiritual. The spiritual recovery tends to get short schrift, possibly because the U.S. is so religiously diverse, and responders are wary of recommending one spiritual means of recovery over another. Nevertheless, The vets in IVW know from their own experience that spiritual resources help one recover from deep wounds. That’s why we identify ourselves as an interfaith workgroup. At a time when war is being waged under the banner of one religious group or another, we of IVW work deliberately across faith lines to bring healing and wholeness to vets and their families.

Research looking specifically at combat-related PTSD in Vietnam era Veterans suggests that the most significant predictor of both suicide attempts and preoccupation with suicide is combat-related guilt. (See: Hendin, H., & Haas, A. P. (1991). Suicide and guilt as manifestations of PTSD in Vietnam combat veterans. American Journal of Psychiatry, 148, 586-591.) Many Veterans experience highly intrusive thoughts and extreme guilt about acts committed during times of war. These thoughts can often overpower the emotional coping capacities of Veterans.

Zachary Moon is a Quaker U.S. Army chaplain, and author of the book, Coming Home, which is a guide to churches that want to help returning vets and their families. Many secular agencies help returning veterans deal with physical and emotional recovery. Communities of faith are best equiped to address the third stage, spiritual recovery. Moral injury is a wound to the conscience, and faith communities historically have been husbanders of conscience.

If your community of faith is troubled by the high suicide rates among men and women veterans, please promote the reading of Sheehan’s and Moon’s books, and get in touch with the Interfaith Veterans’ Workgroup via our website, http://ivw.website.

— Peace,
Rev. Thomas C. Davis
Vietnam vet and convener of IVW