It's A tragic trend. The rate of veterans who die by suicide is over 50% higher than that of the U.S. population. In the latest numbers available, 162 Illinois veterans died by suicide in 2022.
It's a problem veteran and SIU graduate student Joshua Hinkle wears on an arm tattoo featuring 19 circles, "I've lost 19 people that I served with to suicide. I keep them on my arm. to remind me of why I'm here."
Hinkle served in the Army for 14 years, with five years on active duty. He served two tours in Iraq. He says he suffered his own darkness for 10 years, spending 297 days in inpatient care over a two-year period. He eventually found an outlet in a Colorado facility that he wants to share with other struggling vets. This led to the foundation of the Freeborn Initiative, "Veterans come to us, we give them Art supplies to take home. We have weekly art classes at our facility in Alexis."
He wants to give that to an outlet and to be able to share with someone who's had similar experiences, "We take like glass bottles or broken ceramics and we tell the veterans to put everything they're struggling with into that broken thing and then we throw it into the wall and it breaks. But then we take that and we put it into a rock tumblr and it tumbles it smooth and then they get to take all their frustrations out and make it into something beautiful."
He's pursuing a master's degree at SIU so he can learn how to serve more veterans who all have unique needs, "Instead of taking one treatment modality and shoehorning every veteran into it, we want to make the veteran the priority."
Hinkle says the program also gives support to family members as each person has their own battle to fight.
