From battlefield injury to suicide prevention: How a wounded soldier is helping save fellow veterans' lives

Retired U S Army Lt Col Daniel Gade a wounded soldier who refused to let the enemy win and built a career helping other soldiers in the classroom is now assisting veterans as they cope with returning to normal life while facing dark times and possibly suicide The Department of Veterans Affairs' VA National Veteran Suicide Prevention annual summary disclosed in December revealed there were suicides among all U S adults in averaging just over per day The numbers included veteran suicides per day Gade a two-time Purple Heart recipient serves as a senior advisor for America s Warrior Partnership AWP which has a mission to partner with communities to prevent veteran suicide while also helping communities figure out how to provide for their veterans Through academic research with Duke University and other institutions along with state and local agencies AWP ascertained that the veteran suicide rate is much higher than what is released BIPARTISAN BILL WOULD MAKE IT EASIER FOR MILITARY RECRUITS WITH HEALTHCARE ISSUES TO LAND DEFENSE JOBSIn fact the research conducted by AWP and its partners shows the veteran suicide rate is definitely higher Gade announced because various deaths go unreported The organization he added is conducting rigorous research that is getting to particular of the root causes of veteran dislocation a term Gade used because dislocation or disconnectedness is kind of a precondition for suicide What they're looking at is the disconnectedness in order to better prevent suicide he declared So it's not about dumping money into situation lines because by the time somebody calls a dilemma line it's way too late And for a lot of people they never call a problem line they just go to the gun safe And that's not good enough Instead the process is about building veterans back up and helping them find their place in society a process Gade stated he personally experienced Gade joined the Army in at the age of A year later he was accepted into the U S Military Academy at West Point in New York He graduated from the academy in becoming an armored officer in the Army Seven years later he was deployed to Iraq where he was wounded twice 'DOWN TO ZERO' VETERAN SUICIDE EMERGENCY TARGETED IN VA BILL BY BIPARTISAN HOUSE COALITIONThe first time he was wounded was in November when the tank he was in was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade Gade declared he was wounded mildly though a young soldier next to him Dennis Miller from La Salle Michigan was killed in the attack Two months later Gade was involved in another attack I was hit by a roadside bomb an IED improvised explosive device that caused me to lose my entire right leg So I'm a right leg hip-level amputee he revealed adding that the wounds forced him to spend a year in the hospital During that time I had to find a way to rebuild myself Rebuilding meant Gade had to rediscover who he was going to be professionally and personally It also meant pondering the type of athletics he would be able to do and whether he would be able to provide for his family All of those were really critical questions years ago when I was trying to solve that concern and since then I ve had a great career he revealed U S SOLDIER WOUNDED DURING GAZA PIER MISSION DIES MONTHS AFTER BEING INJUREDA year to the day after Gade was injured he started to work on his master s degree at the University of Georgia Upon completion he was invited to the White House to serve as an associate director of the White House Domestic Program Council under George W Bush s administration I went from being sort of a user-level wounded warrior to being at the very highest levels of cabinet you know helping to formulate protocol that would help wounded warriors Gade disclosed Gade retired from the Army in spending the last six years of his amenity as a professor at West Point which he calls a phenomenal place After that Gade dabbled in politics making a run for the U S Senate in Virginia in as a Republican against Democratic Sen Mark Warner Gade ultimately lost but he was able to join Glenn Youngkin s campaign for Virginia governor as an advisor and when Youngkin won Gade was tapped to serve as the commissioner of the Department of Veterans Services I got to go back to my roots kind of serving veterans which is what I ve done as a personal mission for multiple years now basically since I became a wounded warrior back in Gade commented In contemporary times Gade owns a service-disabled veteran-owned small business called Interfuse which is involved in chemical and biological defense products for the Air Force Army and Navy BENGHAZI LEGEND MARK GEIST PRESENTS K ORGANIZATION DOG TO COMBAT VETERAN IN N J He also continues to help veterans through AWP by connecting veterans to their communities and giving them purpose and value while connecting them with other people When you do that Gade explained you find suicidality or the propensity to commit suicide goes down a good bit One of the communities the organization has worked with is the Navajo Nation If you think about people in society who are disadvantaged you perpetually sort of think about you know minorities in the inner city or people born into a tough situation like that Gade explained But very limited people know the plight of the American Indian Gade grew up in North Dakota where the Navajo Nation owns several large reservations Those reservations he stated suffer from poverty alcoholism dysfunctional families divorce and countless other issues He explained that several people in the Navajo Nation join the military because they are patriotic but also because they are searching for a way to escape and better themselves Oftentimes they go on to do great things in the military Gade commented pointing to the Navajo Code Talkers who used their native language to create secret codes during World War II After serving their country the tribal members return to their communities but according to Gade they bring back post-traumatic stress physical injuries or other conditions that get laid on top of what were already tough economic and social conditions for them America s Warrior Partnership through its connectedness with the Navajo Nation is taking sort of a whole-of-society approach Gade noted It s not just helping police figure out how you divert somebody instead of arresting somebody In chosen cases you might want to offer them materials so they can escape that path themselves Part of that area connection also gives insight into whom the veterans are not just to prevent suicide but also to get better statistics on what is leading to veteran suicide AWP created a project called Operation Deep Dive that digs further into veteran causes of death FOX NEWS' PETE HEGSETH OPENS UP ABOUT POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS AFTER IRAQ DEPLOYMENTWhile the VA reports a veteran suicide rate of about AWP exposed through Operation Deep Dive that the rate is almost double that Gade explained the difference came down to unreported suicides For example there may be a -year-old veteran who crashes a conveyance at midnight but it is not known why he crashed the car The coroner may just write the cause of death as a single-vehicle accident but a deeper dive by Operation Deep Dive may look into the person s life That same probe may find the veteran was despairing had just gone through a divorce or something along those lines Another example where Operation Deep Dive may help is if someone has an overdose of a prescription medication prescribed by the VA The coroner has to determine if it is accidental or suicide and by doing a deep dive the organization is finding that the deaths are more likely than not to have been self-harm or accidental self-harm rather than just pure accidents That s where the difference comes it s expanding our definition of unnatural death to include these others Gade revealed And then you realize oh man a whole lot of these are suicides and not just single-vehicle accidents Every suicide is tragic but every suicide you know suicide is a complaint of despair he added What America's Warrior Partnership is doing is really trying to get at the roots of that and defeat suicide before it comes into somebody's life