Vet Suicide on the Rise

First, thank you for being among VA's 80,000 volunteers. Our volunteers are a priceless asset to both the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the veterans we are privileged to serve. Every VA hospital has a Patient Advocate, whose job is to assist veteran patients in responding to questions or concerns as well as managing the feedback we receive from patients, family members, and friends. You might consider asking your hospital's voluntary service coordinator if an assignment to the Patient Advocate's Office would be a good idea. Other readers interested in volunteering their time and talents to support the care of our Nation's veterans might want to check out our Voluntary Service web site.

VA is continually evaluating, improving, and creating new programs to ensure our veterans receive timely, efficient and high quality health care. For your information, all returning OEF/OIF veterans have five years of eligibility and access to VA health care services, and staff at any VA Medical Center or clinic can help veterans enroll for care. For information on other benefits, veterans may contact the Veterans Benefits Administration Hotline at 1-800-827-1000 for guidance or for additional information. Moreover, when face-to-face contact may be needed, any combat veteran who is having difficulty in navigating the VA system can drop in at any Vet Center for information and care.

Finally, everyone should be aware of the National Suicide Prevention Hotline,

1-800-273-TALK (8255), and should encourage any veteran who is in emotional distress, or knows of a veteran in crisis, to call the Hotline to begin the process of getting help. When calling the Hotline, the first message prompt heard is, "If you are a US military veteran or if you are calling about a veteran, press '1'." Upon pressing "1," the caller is immediately connected with the National Suicide Prevention Call Center and a VA trained suicide prevention clinical staff member.

Thank you for volunteering to assist our veterans at the Palo Alto hospice. VA needs more dedicated volunteers. Your assessment about VA's notorious complicated bureaucratic red tape is correct. VA demands too many pages with too much senseless repetitive information that needlessly bogs down the system.

There are two ways to fix this problem, and both need a boost. First, any veteran facing a bureaucratic problem at VA should seek the free professional assistance of an accredited veterans service organization, such as the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), www.dav.org. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans can contact the National Veterans Legal Services Program. When VA paperwork becomes too much of an adversarial burden, groups like the DAV and NVLSP help prepare veterans' paperwork and spend the extra time with veterans to explain VA's labyrinth system.

Second, groups like Veterans for Common Sense provide advocacy in Washington to cut red tape. For example, in July 2007, VCS urged VA to automatically approve disability claims for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With a stroke of a pen, VA met us halfway. VA recently issued new regulations where veterans diagnosed with PTSD by the military while still in the military would be granted automatic disability benefits for PTSD. To learn more about the major policy changes advocated by Veterans for Common Sense, please read our "VCS Vision for a Vibrant VA in 2009" at our web site.

Thank you for your question and for your service as a hospice volunteer. I cannot speak for the VA, per se, as I am an active duty Amy psychiatrist. Both the DoD and the VA are working very hard to streamline the disability system. It is a very complex process however, and sometimes fixing one piece -- like trying to speed up the process -- has other unintended negative consequences. There should be steady improvement over the next few years.