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Aug. 7, 2025 - Epoch Times
01:20
What’s Behind the Rise in Veteran Suicides? | Derek Blumke
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As an example, Hunter Whitley is a 23-year-old former Marine.
He was Abbey Gate in Afghanistan during the withdrawal.
He had suffered a minor TBI during the bombing there.
Wooned up at the University of Alabama, was a student veteran going to school full time there, and then was also volunteering at the mental health clinic on campus, a VA mental health clinic on campus.
The program that I built was focused on helping veterans on college campus to access via mental health care.
Hunter took his own life about two and a half years ago.
And the program that I built is basically what became that clinic, which was to help get vets into care.
And Hunter was prescribed an antidepressant, mertazepine, along with hydroxazine, and a month and a half later he was dead.
And the VA did an investigation into his death and found that they failed to provide informed consent, failed to provide safe medication management.
My friend Brian and Kim Brumfield we were with last night.
Last night, along with Shannon, they lost their son Connor, 22 years old.
Both of these young men had fit cleanly within the box warning by the FDA, but in both cases it seems neither had been provided informed consent.
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