Veterans' Uphill Road Back, Struggle With Suicide

Five years ago, Joe Miller, then an Army Ranger captain with three Iraq tours under his belt, sat inside his home near Fort Bragg holding a cocked Beretta 40mm, and prepared to kill himself.

He didn't pull the trigger. So Miller's name wasn't added to the list of active-duty U.S. military men and women who have committed suicide. That tally reached 350 last year, a record pace of nearly one a day. That's more than the 295 American troops who were killed in Afghanistan in the same year.

"I didn't see any hope for me at the time. Everything kind of fell apart," Miller said. "Helplessness, worthlessness. I had been having really serious panic attacks. I had been hospitalized for a while." He said he pulled back at the last minute when he recalled how he had battled the enemy in Iraq, and decided he would fight his own depression and post-traumatic stress.