Things I don't do.
1. Speak ill of the dead.

Sometimes it’s best to just not actually type the words or hit the “post” button.

Prayers for the family.

He openly talked of his battle with CTE.
Sounds like someone else may have issues.

So if a soldier commits sucicide they are a coward?

Once again showing you're a sad, twisted individual.

I’ve known quite a few who have and I’d consider them all cowards. 5 to be exact that I knew personally and served with. I have no sympathy for anyone who kills their self except for those people in the World Trade Center that has two choices burn to death or jump. I don’t have sympathy for my best friend from HS who blew his own brains out or my mother in law who hung herself from the barn rafters with a dog leash. These people put their families through hell so they can take the easy way out.

Anyways back to topic

Prayers for his family especially the kids

After doing a quick google looks like 2017 was the first time a live person was diagnosed with CTE as they had to do a biopsy on the brain before that to even know if someone had CTE. I can’t find anything else about diagnosing CTE in live people. So was this guy diagnosed by a doctor or did he assume he had CTE because of prior concussions and head impacts?

Look I’ve been thinking about it and I agree I should have just kept my mouth shut. I’ve had a lot of suicide around me in my life. Best friend in HS, uncle, aunt, Mother in Law, atleast 5 Army friends. The one thing they all have in common is the families are left behind wondering and blaming themselves for not doing something to help. It sucks my wife blames herself for her moms suicide because her mom called the night she did it and my wife didn’t answer. I have very strong opinions about this subject as I’ve had way more experience with it then I’d like. Sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut and I don’t so I’d like to apologize for expressing my opinion on this the way I did.

Well done.

His wife shared a little

https://people.com/sports/jason-hairston-wife-speaks-out-about-cte/

Sapper -- appreciate your last post-- it is a crappy subject to talk about and most of the time no one feels any better afterwards. I think most of us who have served have had more experience with that subject than we care to admit. I do agree-- sometimes I think there are folks that take the easy/selfish way out- folks that never went outside the wire or experienced war for what it is-- and I share your feelings of anger when those people are memorialized and hero worshipped.

But I also feel... hell I know that I have seen men changed completely from who I knew them as. Their experiences and ability to handle that madness we've seen and things that happened makes it to where the rational side of them has to struggle to hang on and they are literally in a fight for their life, every, single day.

This article: https://people.com/sports/jason-hairston-wife-speaks-out-about-cte/ helps to explain a good bit about this situation. CTE can only be definitely diagnosed postmortem, HOWEVER- some interesting info on the scans and diagnosis that he went through. The fact that he could feel things slipping and she could see it slipping from him is saddening and terrifying and it goes to show how powerful the affect of those issues can be if they topple someone who had achieved so much. Look back through his posts of his hunts with his dad and his son- no rational person would give that up...

My takeaways from something like this are twofold--
1. It can happen to anyone at anytime- you don't know what everyone is dealing with even if it appears they have it all.
2. If you have a buddy, friend, family member who is walking that line-- whether it is CTE, a stress disorder, or whatever--- surrounding them with people who care and keeping tabs on them is the only way you can make a difference and there are men I know who are alive today living life to the fullest only because people were there to pick them up when they hit the bottom.

very well said dh175.

It is very sad when a family loses a father.

It is sad and I never want to hear about it happening. At the same time, I have respect for people wanting to make their exit on their terms. That doesn't make it right or appropriate from the perspective of the living. I get that. If Jason Hairston felt he needed to make an exit on his terms given what was going on to him, I can't argue with such a decision. The prospects of what he would face, troubles caused to the family to care for him, and what he would ultimately be reduced to if the deterioration continued is nothing any of us would want to have happen to ourselves or any loved ones. His prognosis was extremely poor and treatments had failed to bring relief or cessation of deterioration.

CTE isn’t like manic depression or PTSD. It’s your brain physically changing, which leads to different mental issues. As of now, the only way to test for CTE is to inspect the brain post death. It is a degenerative disease that eats your brain over time.

I get that but how can they blame his suicide on something he can’t even be diagnosed with until after death? I’d like to see the results of his brain inspection whenever it’s released but I tip then it’s just speculation that he had CTE correct? Hell I’ve prob got it I’ve been in vehicles on 5 occasions that were hit by IEDs with minor concussion symptoms on 3 of those occasions and way too close to many other large explosions but we will never know bc I’m not getting my brain inspected haha.

I see what you’re saying. Yes, until they autopsy, they can’t know for sure. I suspect they are making assumptions, based on his medical history and comparisons to other people who were found to have had CTE (looking at behavior patterns).

They are. Apparently, he did have brain damage and it was degenerative, regardless of what the cause may be. Maybe it is CTE. Maybe it is something else. Maybe it is a combination. From the descriptions in the articles I have seen, he could have have various forms of frontotemporal disorders that have just occurred independently of CTE, but certainly may have been exacerbated by it. Whether the doctors will actually be able to say CTE was the explicit cause of his issues or not, is a whole other matter.

Classy. Tell us Columbo, what are basing your hunch on? All the articles, from including his own wife, that suggest different?

Maybe keep this type of stuff to yourself, or not on a public forum where someone that cares about the man could see it.....or just keep showing your a**.

He apologized later in this thread.

Thank you. I sometimes just blurt stuff out, say what’s on my mind but word it the wrong or insensitive way. Need to work on that for sure.

Sap,

nothing wrong with saying what is on your mind. However, viewing suicide as the person being a "coward" or acting "selfishly" is incorrect. The person with a brain injury has a "broken brain," which is a physical problem like having a broken leg. Their broken brain has trouble thinking and functioning correctly like a broken leg does for walking. They are not thinking straight and thinking through all the consequences as we would. A traumatic brain injury in any form, whether a child suffering a skull fracture in a bike wreck or a soldier in an IED blast, doubles their risk of suicide later in life.

Here is a lay report of a recent study, which is only the latest, confirming this correlation. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-healt...e-idUSKBN1KZ2A2

Somewhat more detailed presentation: https://www.sprc.org/sites/default/files/migrate/library/TBI_Suicide.pdf

Suicide in general is a complex problem, far beyond simple explanations and fixes.

We can try to help those around us, but if the worst happens, please try to be gentle and forgiving for those lost and those who remain for we cannot know the suffering or demons that drove them to their fate. We can only hope they have found peace and pray for their soul.

It's a sad situation all around. No one wants to loose control.

But I'll never forget what a widow said to me after she found her husband with his brains blown out in his shed. He was diagnosed with what they guessed to be Alzheimers.

She was very angry at him over what he did. She had nightmares about that scene in his shed. Said she never could of imagined having to deal with his death is such a manner.

Think of this guys family finding him that way. Did it occur to him how it would damage them for the rest of their lives, probably not. I know from what I learned that day if I have a friend or family member going through this I'm going to talk to them about this subject. Let them know that if they decide this is the solution at least put some thought into it and make sure your grisly death isn't the last image your family has of you.

Well said. My step-grandmother, as a young girl, was the one to find her dad. She wasn't ever completely right in the head as an adult.

Some, like Hairston, probably considered the ramifications to some extent. No doubt he was considering the horrors he was going through to deal with it on a daily basis. Many suicidal people definitely do consider what it will do to their families to watch them deteriorate over time, the financial and emotional cost it will have on the family, etc.

Of course, and again, Hairston had diagnosed damage to his frontal cortex. His decision making ability may have been compromised in many ways.

Whatever the cause, the end result was the same. Just seems like it is time to let this man RIP.