Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, July 14, 2010, Chairman Harry Mitchell (D-AZ) conducted a hearing of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee to examine the progress of suicide prevention outreach efforts at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The Subcommittee evaluated the current state of VA’s ability to educate the public of VA services concerning suicide prevention and discussed the effectiveness of the media campaign to encourage veterans to seek help at the VA.
Public Law 110-110, The Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act, required VA to develop a pilot program encouraging veterans battling suicide to seek help at the VA. As a result, VA advertised its suicide hotline using Washington, D.C. metro area buses and metro subway trains, in addition to creating a Public Service Announcement for network television use.
“As you know, many of our newest generation of veterans, as well as those who served previously, bear wounds that cannot be seen and are hard to diagnose,” said Chairman Mitchell. “Proactively bringing the VA to them, as opposed to waiting for veterans to find the VA, is a critical part of delivering the care they have earned in exchange for their brave service. No veteran should feel they are alone,” said Chairman Mitchell.
The two witnesses of the hearing’s first panel were Warrant Officer Melvin Cintron, USA (Ret.) who has served multiple tours in Iraq, and also Ms. Linda Bean, who tragically lost her son to suicide after he returned from his second tour in Iraq. Mr. Cintron observed that while the VA’s suicide hotline is a valuable and much needed service, there should be other equally accessible resources offered by the VA that service intermediate levels of urgency prior to the final resort of calling the suicide hotline. Ms. Bean stated that to improve suicide prevention and outreach, the VA must publicize civilian mental health counseling alternatives that might better suit some veterans who are either not located near a VA facility, or who may otherwise choose not to approach the VA for help.
Bob Filner (D-CA), Chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said, “The Department of Veterans Affairs has made significant progress in its effort to address the tragic problem of veteran suicide. However, until we can be confident that an effective system is in place to reach 100% of our veterans who may be contemplating suicide, this Committee will not stop in its efforts to ensure that a more robust and all encompassing VA outreach program has been developed and implemented. To only help the veterans who walk through the doors of a VA facility is not enough. The Department must vigorously reach out to the entire veteran population and educate those not currently enrolled in the VA health care system about the services available and how to go about accessing them.”
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Panel 1:
Warrant Officer Melvin Cintron, USA (Ret.), Woodbridge, Virginia, Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran
Linda Bean, Milltown, New Jersey, Mother of Operation Iraqi Freedom Veteran
Panel 2:
Timothy S. Embree, Legislative Associate, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
Jacob B. Gadd, Deputy Director, Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation Commission, The American Legion
Thomas J. Berger, Ph.D., Executive Director, Veterans Health Council, Vietnam Veterans of America
Panel 3:
Colonel RobertW. Saum, USA, Director, Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, U.S. Department of Defense
Robert L. Jesse, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Health, Veterans Health Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Accompanied by:
Janet Kemp, R.N., Ph.D., National Suicide Prevention Coordinator, Veterans Health Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Prepared testimony and a link to the webcast are available on the internet at this link: http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?newsid=604.
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