Choking back tears, Army veteran Nick Bonanno remembered his fallen friend.
“He was just the happiest guy, like none of us knew that there was anything wrong,” Bonanno said. “None of us knew that he was fighting something.”
According to the 2025 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report released by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, on average, 17.5 veterans committed suicide each day in 2023.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental-health condition triggered by witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event. This is prevalent in many veterans, as the National Center for PTSD estimates that 7% of veterans suffer from the disorder.
“Being on a battlefield and shot at, that is not a normal experience,” Kelly Gregory, owner and therapist at Arena Counseling and Wellness in Gainesville, said. “Your brain doesn’t realize you’re off the battlefield, but your brain being hypervigilant and on alert and on edge, that’s exactly what your body’s supposed to do when it’s under threat.”
The most recent numbers reported by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs shows that 550 veterans took their lives in Florida in 2023, second to Texas. That is a rate of 38.6% per 100,000 residents.
Bonanno served in the U.S. Army from 2011 to 2016, mostly stationed in El Paso, Texas, before deploying to Bahrain for a year.
After breaking his ankle and suffering from PTSD, Bonanno adopted Becky, a service dog trained to assist a veteran in everyday life. Bonanno said that she licks him when she can tell he is out of it, which has been comforting as a method of distraction.
On Memorial Day, Bonanno had a beer in honor of Albert Rivenburg, a fellow soldier in his unit who took his life when he came home from serving.
“We found out a year afterwards that he committed suicide because when he got out, when I got out, he didn’t have social media,” Bonanno said. “He didn’t have anything to keep in contact.”
Now, Bonanno is involved with a nonprofit dedicated to helping veterans.
Florida4Warriors is an organization that provides support and community to veterans, active duty members and first responders, while bringing awareness to the 22 average veterans that commit suicide a year, though that number can fluctuate.
While not a veteran, co-founder Tamara Sugar has a special connection to those who are growing up in a military family. With her organization, she makes an effort to host 22-kilometer hikes and events like camping at Ginnie Springs to bring people together in one-on-one connections.
Nicknamed “Mama Bear,” Sugar said that no matter the time, she will always answer the phone to help any one of her members in need.
Finding more difficulty making connections back home, Lois Bombara, a 74-year-old veteran living in Ocala, joined the Army in 1977 after a dare from her sister until 2013. While she never spent time in combat, she struggles with PTSD from feeling the ground shake on an intelligence mission in Kuwait.
Her biggest challenge is the interaction with other women after working in a male-dominated field her entire career.
As male involvement in the military and in combat is significantly higher, numbers for female veteran suicides are lower. But Gregory finds that it may be related, in some ways, to how men are raised.
“I work especially hard with my male clients to help reframe vulnerability as strength,” Gregory said. “It’s actually so incredibly strong to actually feel the thing rather than to just wall myself up and numb off and just stay disconnected from it.”
And PTSD is not just common in veterans. It is in first responders, too.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimates that one in three first responders has PTSD from their time serving.
“I’ve held dead babies and dead kids that were my kids’ age,” former ACSO Lt. Matthew Yakubsin said. “I’ve done a lot of things that I never will forget.”
Nickolas Tilliman went from the battlefield to the police force, serving as a deputy with the Alachua County Sheriff's Department beginning in 2018 on the night shift. He served in the Navy before moving to the U.S. Army National Guard. After coming to North Central Florida, Tilliman deployed to Afghanistan and returned to keep working for ACSO.
Described as “Mr. Make Everyone Happy,” Tilliman is remembered for always being there for others, literally giving the shirt off his back for those around him.
“One of our dispatchers didn’t have a shirt for the ugly sweater contest, so he gave her his so she could compete,” Yakubsin said. “She ended up winning with his sweater.”
But behind the scenes, Tilliman struggled. PTSD from his time overseas and in the field took control of him, and he was stigmatized when he asked for help. The department removed his gun and badge for his safety.
But when he got them back, he did not vocalize his internal battle to avoid having those restrictions again.
He lost his battle with mental health, taking his own life on Feb. 15, 2023, three days after his 40th birthday.
“He always wanted to make sure people were smiling, make jokes, always be there for battle buddies, for people that needed assistance,” Yakubsin said. “But it’s usually those people that are the ones that need help the most because they’re not taking care of themselves. They’re helping everybody else.”
In honor of his deputy, Yakubsin began the NicTilliman Foundation Inc. dedicated to mental health awareness of veterans and first responders.
“That’s probably one of the hardest things I ever did working for the sheriff’s office, and I was the Honor Guard commander as well, was burying one of your own not at the hands of a bad guy but from the hands of himself,” Yakubsin said.
The foundation also works with Florida4Warriors to provide that support to one another.
Florida4Warriors leadership helps others, which in turn, helps themselves. Community and support brings veterans great comfort in the wake of what they experienced.