At Least 22,000 Veterans Called the VA Suicide Hotline In One Year
Tue Jul 29, 2008 at 06:42:28 PM PDT
Actually the number is probably higher - 22,000 identified themselves explicitly as vets. Over 55,000 called the special line set up through the VA in its first year of operation. Some are friends and family of vets, which makes sense, as watching someone close struggle with PTSD or worse must be unbearable. These statistics are gruesome.
Calls to the VA’s hotline more than doubled this calendar year going from a total of about 21,000 in January to more than 55,000 by the end of June, averaging about 250 calls a day.
over...
Out of 55,469 calls that the VA’s suicide hotline has received in the last year, 22,044 callers identify themselves as veterans. Callers can remain anonymous if they choose. About 3,000 (2,966) identified themselves as a family member or friend of a vet. Six hundred (621) said they were on active-duty. The VA rescued 1,221 callers with emergency responders while 2,911 received help in what the VA calls a “warm transfer.” More than 4,500 (4,592) callers were referred to a VA suicide prevention coordinator in their local area. The VA says they don’t know of any individuals who committed suicide after using the 1-800-number. A spokesperson for the VA told CBS News that “there are none that we are aware of that have occurred when they called the hotline.”
We simply don't know that answer, and I would gather that it's probably too hopeful.
This hotline was set up in 2007, after Democrats like Harry Mitchell urged its implementation after seeing the sorrowful statistics on veteran suicides.
A recent RAND Corporation study found that nearly 20 percent, or about 300,000 veterans out of the approximately 1.64 million who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently suffer from major depression or post traumatic stress disorder. A news report last November by CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian discovered that in 2005 more than 6,200 veterans had committed suicide at a rate twice that of non-veterans. A series of internal VA emails, which were exposed earlier this year, confirmed CBS’ findings as well as revealed that about 1,000 vets seeking care from the VA attempt suicide every month for a total of about 12,000 a year.
(CBS and NPR have been very good at tracking the story of veteran suicides)
So now we have 20%, at a minimum, of our soldiers coming home with PTSD or some mental health issue, and around 2% driven to thoughts of suicide, 1% driven to actually attempt it, and about half that succeeding in the attempt. That is an epidemic.
The VA's efforts to offer help to troubled veterans is fine, but if they diagnosed these cases during soldier's tours and on discharge rather than hiding the scope of the problem, they wouldn't have to hire hundreds of mental health professionals as call screeners to inadequately address the problem on a suicide hotline. This is a textbook example of how early detection in health treatment saves lives and money. But the VA's modus operandi is to avoid diagnoses at the outset, because then we would have to factor the human toll into the real cost of war.
It's really heartbreaking but there is a better way which requires minimal competence at the VA.
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