Similar to the “one in four” statistic is the now-common claim, repeated regularly in the American media, that US military veterans are killing themselves at an alarming rate because of the stress of fighting two major wars. “Twenty-two a day”—meaning twenty-two veteran suicides every twenty-four hours—has become the mantra both of veterans’ service organizations as well as antiwar groups. Multiple stories have appeared in electronic and print media about the “epidemic” of veteran suicide in 2013 and after, with dramatic headlines and pictures of young men and women in uniform who’d ended
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