Suicide Prevention Month

Floor Speech

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Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I guess I found in my time that suicide is an epidemic of purpose, and worth, and value.

I come to this line of thought because I have had countless veterans call me; reach out to my office; find me on Facebook; find me on some other form of social media; had a member of their family call my office or reach out, a mother, or a spouse, and talk about the fact that their veteran wants to take their life.

And in seeing that play out time and time again, I realize each and every time that somebody is out there searching for their value in their life. They are searching for where is their value? Where is their worth to the rest of the world? And for me, that helps me to recognize that this can be prevented.

I think veterans face this challenge in a unique way and in an elevated way, not because the challenge of war or recovering from injury is something that cannot be overcome. I think most of us end up finding in our lives that when we have overcome something incredibly difficult, those are the most memorable and purposeful moments of our life.

No person, veteran included, should have to believe that their greatest contribution to the world, or to their Nation, or to their family, or their community is something that is behind them.

That is something that is especially difficult for a veteran to overcome because their worth, and their value, and their work every single day was tied directly to serving all of those things at the highest possible level, serving their brothers and their sisters to their left and right, knowing that on any given day, they might have the opportunity to save a life, to save the life of one of their closest friends that they could ever have in life, a friend that would be willing to do absolutely everything for them, to include sacrificing their own life for that friend of them.

It is hard to replicate, maybe impossible to replicate, that purpose, and that worth, and that value. And I believe that it is in that that we find such a challenge to overcome suicide with our veterans because of everything that they have already given this country, and the drive, and the determination, and the will, and the intestinal fortitude inside of our veterans to want to go out there and find the next greatest thing in life, the next greatest way to serve.

That is the difficult challenge that we find ourselves trying to overcome. In having so many veterans reach out to me, I have learned this about veteran suicide. Each of them who were prevented from taking their life have said that there was nothing I could do, if somebody else didn't reach out to them. Because I could have not known anybody else that they could have told, that they didn't tell, they wouldn't have known.

It is in that that I believe it is important that we as veterans make a commitment to one another about being there for one another; about the fact that we had an oath that we never leave a fallen comrade. We always used to say, we always place the mission first, and that mission doesn't end when we take off that uniform. That mission, that commitment to one another, has to continue.

As veterans, we make it a point to put the most important things that we care about in word, in verse, things that we memorize. Whether it is the Soldier's Creed, or the Ranger Creed, or the Special Forces Creed, or some other ethos that we recognize as part of our service. We put it in words and we speak about it, and we say it time, and time, and time again.

And that is why I believe that it is important that we as veterans make known in word our commitment to one another; that we are never going to let one of our brothers or sisters be left behind; that our commitment to one another never ends; that we are never going to allow one of them to bring harm to themselves; that our love for each other never ends.

That willingness of what we would go out there and do for one another on the battlefield has no time limit on it, has no fuse. It will never be a wick that burns down. That has to be our commitment to one another, to demonstrate that kind of love and caring for each other as veterans. It is the only solution that I have been able to find in my life toward helping with this one veteran, one person at a time, one commitment at a time, a commitment that never ends, and a commitment that has no limits to it.

I believe all of our veterans want that and are capable of that, and I am proud of every one of them for that commitment that I know they have inside of them.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) for holding this Special Order.

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