But when he went to the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), instead of handling his medical condition, they prescribed him antidepressants known to cause suicide.
After trying—again and again—to get the medical help he needed, he finally gave up.
Cody killed himself.
He is just one tragic example of how VA psychiatrists are killing American heroes.
“I’m hooked on drugs now because of the VA, and I need to get off of them. They’re making me worse and making me crazy.”
The psychotropic drugs the VA plies our veterans with say right on the label they cause suicide. Meanwhile, the VA’s involuntary commitment of veterans for forced psychiatric “treatment” crushes their hopes, shatters their trust and makes them give up on life itself.
And whether by drugs or incarceration, the outcome is the same: VA psychiatrists are causing veterans to end their own lives.
Over 17 veterans kill themselves—each and every day.
Jordan Hunkin was 36, a Marine veteran who completed several tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. He went to the Malcolm Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida, seeking help. When he mentioned having mental issues, he was tackled and held for three days under Florida’s Baker Act.
After he was finally released, he refused to return to the VA for help.
Six months later, he killed himself.
Hunkin’s mother, Beverly, raged at the VA, saying, “You threw my son under the bus. You didn’t take care of him.”
Cody Anderson’s mother, Connie, likewise told Freedom that, at the VA hospital in Loma Linda, California, “They didn’t treat the pain. They just started giving him prescriptions for mental problems.”
He had prescriptions for over a dozen drugs at the time of his death, including bupropion, escitalopram, quetiapine fumarate, doxepin HCI, mirtazapine and others that list suicidal ideation as a “side effect.”
“He called and told me, ‘I’m hooked on drugs now because of the VA, and I need to get off of them. They’re making me worse and making me crazy,’” Connie told Freedom. “All Loma Linda did was prescribe him more meds. He told me, ‘I need rehab. I’m addicted. I’m becoming a junkie to pills. I can’t live like this.’”
“I didn’t want him to die in this terrible hospital.”
Eventually, he went home, sent “I love you” notes to his mom and friends, taped a plastic bag over his head, pumped in a lethal dose of helium and flipped the off switch on his life of pain.
“Cody came into the VA for help,” Connie recalled, “and they kept turning him away.… I don’t want veterans going there thinking they are going to get help when they’re not.”
There are many other examples—and too many veterans who desperately need true help.
In May, Theodore Kokkins, 72, died at a Gainesville, Florida, hospice. He had been Baker Acted from February 11 to March 6 this year. During that time, he received no treatment for a liver condition that turned out to be cancer, which his daughter, Alissa, says the hospital should have known he had. “He was Baker Acted with no medical help, and those were critical weeks for him to get that help,” Alissa told Freedom. “Nobody should be Baker Acted without a review of their medical records. They expedited his death, for sure,” she said.
When Alissa went to visit her father, she found he had several injuries—bed sores, bruising and a dislocated shoulder, and she had no idea how he had received them.
“I’m done,” he told her. “I’m ready to go to heaven.”
She moved him to a hospice, she said, because, “I didn’t want him to die in this terrible hospital.”
“As long as 17 veterans die by suicide each day, our work will not be finished,” US Congressman Mark Takano said. “It will take all of us—legislators, policymakers, researchers, military and veteran peers, caregivers, advocates and VA staff—working together to reduce veteran suicide.”
In fact, something is being done, but not by the VA. Former military colleagues of Hunkin have formed a nonprofit organization, the Marine Corps SIGINT Association, that is pushing for change—lobbying politicians, organizing families and drawing the public’s attention to the issue any way they can.
“Our goal is to get as much reporting and attention on the issue until it’s no longer an issue and veterans can safely get care at the VA,” James Hobby, president of the group, who was a friend of Hunkin’s, told Freedom.
He noted that common gallows humor you would hear in the service is, “Don’t go to the VA—the VA will kill you.” But apparently, the statement is often true—and so is the gallows.
“I want accountability,” Hobby said. “I think we need to go after these people who are hurting people.”
The VA, he noted, does not keep records of veterans who are involuntarily institutionalized. “This is a very widespread problem happening all over the US, but the VA doesn’t keep numbers. If they don’t keep numbers, no one can hold them accountable.
“No one is controlling the VA. We want accountability.”
Susan Tostenrude of the VA’s Office of Healthcare Inspections admitted that what happened to Hunkin “definitely was a significant failure.”
But she went even further, stating that incorrect use of the psychiatric Baker Act and other states’ versions “could be” systemic throughout the VA’s more than 170 medical centers nationwide.
“Veterans only go to the VA as a last resort,” Hobby said. “When the VA disregards the veteran’s complaints or issues, the veteran will believe no one will help them.”
So the policy of at least two bad-apple VA hospitals, and perhaps 170 more, is to operate like “hopeless hotels”—to involuntarily incarcerate veterans if they give certain answers to VA questionnaires, or to dope them up to their eyeballs with heavyweight psychotropic drugs and send them packing.
It’s a virtual prescription for suicide.
That’s just not good enough for those whose honor and courage have kept this a free country.
In fact, it’s shameful.
