Letter to the editor: The power of poetry
- Veterans who met monthly for poetry sessions saw a measurable drop in suicidal thinking, per Military Medicine study.
- One vet was suicidal before joining; after a year of poems, he was apparently feeling more like a sonnet.
- Daisy Fancourt's 'Art Cure' claims the arts lower depression, stress, and pain—who knew a rhyming couplet beats a Xanax?
- VA data confirms most vet suicides aren't linked to deployment—just plain old existential dread, which poetry fixes, allegedly.
- Mission Belonging founder suggests the government fund poetry workshops instead of just more bureaucracy.
Brief Summary
A letter to the editor pushes a shockingly low-cost antidote to the national suicide epidemic: poetry. Recent research cited from Military Medicine claims vets who scribbled verses together saw their suicidal ideation tank, while WHO-backed evidence suggests art wields more power than a Prozac prescription. The writer, a Mission Belonging founder, gushes over a sniper who finally sat at the table and a combat medic who swapped booze for a journal—apparently the pen is mightier than the bottle.
Why This Matters
If you're feeling like the world is a dumpster fire and you're the only one who notices, this might hit close to home. The piece suggests your salvation isn't a new app or self-help guru, but grabbing a pencil and bullshitting with strangers in a circle—an approach so cheap it threatens the entire mental health industrial complex.