Congressman, veterans speak on veteran suicide-prevention bill
Rep. Ruben Gallego during an interview on Friday described the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act as a test run to see how the Department of Veterans Affairs can improve suicide prevention and mental health programs throughout the country.
President Barack Obama is expected to sign H.R.5059, or the Clay Hunt SAV Act, on Thursday, Feb. 12, granting the VA $22 million over five years to allow nonprofit agencies to treat veterans. It also authorizes yearly repayment of up to $30,000 in student loans to VA employees practicing psychological medicine or psychiatry and directs U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald to arrange annual, third-party inspections of the VA's mental health care and suicide prevention programs.
Mr. Gallego, the newly elected Democrat for Arizona's 7th Congressional District, believes that giving the VA authorization to work with nonprofits will alleviate pressure from the VA and give veterans the opportunity to be treated at more-convenient locations. He added that there will be more accountability over the VA due to Secretary McDonald's oversight.
Having served as a mortarman in the Marine Corps Reserve, Mr. Gallego deployed to Iraq in 2005 in a front line infantry unit where he said he lost four friends in combat.
"Unfortunately, a lot of my friends… have [post-traumatic stress disorder] and I've had a couple friends that actually have committed suicide, so veteran suicides are very personal to me," the congressman said.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a military-veteran organization most-known for helping pass the Post-9/11 GI Bill, initially proposed The Clay Hunt SAV Act last year in Washington, D.C. Then, Sen. John McCain introduced the bill to the Senate as a bipartisan bill with six other senators.
Clay Hunt was a Marine veteran sniper with two combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively, and an active member of the IAVA. According to the IAVA, the VA rated Mr. Hunt with a 30 percent PTSD rating, even though Mr. Hunt claimed PTSD was preventing him from keeping a job and that the VA lost his files. Mr. Hunt took his own life in 2011 and the VA rated him 100 percent disabled due to PTSD five weeks later.
In an IAVA press release, Susan Selke, Mr. Hunt's mother, stated, "No veteran should have to wait or go through bureaucratic red tape to get the mental health care they earned during their selfless service to our country. While this legislation is not a 100 percent solution, it is a huge step in the right direction."
Marine veteran and Phoenix IAVA member Luis Cardenas said that the IAVA leadership asked its members what their greatest concerns were within the veteran community and veteran suicide rates were at the top.
Mr. Cardenas. president of the Arizona State University Student Veterans Association at the downtown Phoenix campus and a public service/public policy major, said that there was a lot of support for the bill from Arizona politicians, both state and federal, and throughout the military veteran community. "It wasn't a hugely controversial issue… it is just providing funds and resources to the VA so they can do a better job of treating mental health," he said.
But some veterans expressed contrary opinions about the effectiveness of the Clay Hunt SAV Act. An Army veteran who served during Operation Iraqi Freedom and is now living in California, Maxwell Ramsey said the act "outlines stuff that the VA is already authorized to do."
During a podcast interview by Vets on Radio, a veteran-owned and -operated media company based out of Scottsdale, Arizona, Mr. Ramsey said, "The most troubling thing for me [is] ‘establishes a peer support and community outreach pilot program.' That's old school."
He argued that is a job for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion organizations, which, according to him, are struggling to accomplish the task. He further argued that the VA has an adequate budget and that the $22 million over five years doesn't convince him that the bill is going to work.
Mr. Ramsey encouraged the use of outreach via social media and told a story about a veteran who posted on a veteran forum on Facebook that he had been struggling to find a job and was out of baby formula just two days before his VA pension was scheduled to arrive. He said within one hour other veterans had contacted the local Wal-Mart and purchased formula for him and told him to pick it up. "It's that kind of stuff… that will be a lot more effective in reaching out," he said.
Mr. Cardenas said that when he was diagnosed at the VA with traumatic brain injury, the facility was not equipped for dealing with his condition. The treatment of TBI and PTSD has significantly improved since World War II and Vietnam because of constant research and improvement and the $22 million is an "investment to improve what we know now," he said.
He also said that the additional funding would provide better oversight in evaluating the effectiveness of the VA's suicide prevention, mental health and overall health care programs. "You think of the issues we had just here at the Phoenix VA and you think how helpful would it have been if we would have had a third-party source come in every year and look at the programs, how many lives would have been saved," he said.
Based on information from 21 states, the VA reported in February 2012 an average of 22 veteran suicides per day. Like most veterans, Congressman Gallego believes the number is significantly higher and more difficult to capture.
"Personally, as a veteran, there's not necessarily a good tracking record of who's committing suicide. [When] a veteran commits suicide, there's not necessarily any proof that the VA's actually registering that," he said. He added that it is important to know suicide rates among specific military occupational specialties or units to target treatment.
However, Mr. Cardenas argued that studying MOS-related suicides would not be effective because service members perform different jobs during deployment. According to Mr. Cardenas, there would be no efficient way to record or keep track of combat roles performed by non-combat personnel.
While the VA report states that the suicide rates between 2009 and 2012 have been about the same, no new reports have been released with recent studies.
Source: Brian Fore, Newszap Arizona