400,000 Calls to Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline and No One Asks Why?

by Chaplain Kathie

A record number of call to Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline and no one asks why?  How is this possible?

How many reports do we have to read to know there are more and more suicides at the same time there are more and more calls for help? What about all the money spent on “programs” that turn out to be nothing more than well funded research by “experts” with no proof their work even works?

VA crisis hotline takes record number of calls

By Rick Maze – Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 25, 2011 12:01:23 EDT

The Veterans Affairs Department’s Veterans Crisis Line received 14,000 calls in April, the highest monthly volume ever recorded for the four-year-old suicide prevention program.

“Every day last month, more than 400 calls were received,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee chairwoman who disclosed the call volume during a Wednesday hearing. “While it is heartening to know that these calls for help are being answered, it is a sad sign of desperation and difficulties our veterans face that there are so many in need of a lifeline.”

The hotline, established in 2007, is a suicide prevention and crisis counseling program available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The number is 800-273-8255.

Antonette Zeiss, VA’s chief mental health officer, said that since the 2007 launch, the call center has received more than 400,000 calls, referred 55,000 veterans to local suicide prevention coordinators for same-day or next-day help and initiated 15,000 “rescues” of callers near suicide.

15,000 rescues but they also report 400,000 calls? And no reporter is even asking why? How long does this have to go on before they finally begin to wonder what the VA and the DOD has been doing while the numbers get worse?

All this does is prove one more time that when it comes to taking care of the when they come home, we are great at military funerals but lousy at keeping them alive.

UPDATE
What makes all this worse is what a news station did to a very important report.

WITN should be ashamed of report on “Preventing Suicides In The USMC”
The ad on the video for this report lasted 9 seconds and the report lasted 33 seconds. 33 seconds? Is that all this report was worth?

Preventing Suicides In The USMC

Marines and Sailors from Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point heard from speakers Wednesday about how to face personal issues after war.
Posted: 9:35 PM May 25, 2011
Reporter: Dave Jordan

Marines and Sailors from Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point heard from speakers Wednesday about how to face personal issues after war.

The program, “Heroes and Healthy Families,” featured speakers on topics like substance abuse, post traumatic stress and suicide.

Organizers say that 97-percent of the service members that sit through the program say it’s helpful.

In 2011 there have been 66 suspected suicide attempts and 10 suspected suicides in the United States Marine Corps.

Preventing Suicides In The USMC?
Don’t bother looking for more on this report but there is the link to the video. My rule is to always post just a paragraph or two to honor the work of the reporter and take you to the article so they get credit for the work they do. We need reporters covering all of these stories so if we do not go to the links, the producers and editors won’t know they matter. In this case, the coverage was so lacking, what you see above is the whole thing. That’s it!

WITN producers did the Marines and their families a huge injustice on this. Why did they bother to send a reporter at all to cover this? How can a story talking about the heartbreak of 10 families of the suspected suicides and 66 Marines suffering so much they tried to end their own lives end up being so unworthy of a full report?