Last week a New Jersey woman named Linda Bean trekked to the nation’s capitol to testify about her son’s suicide two years ago. Army Sgt. Coleman Bean, 26, killed himself after coming back to the states following two tours of duty in Iraq.
Bean puts the blame for her son’s death squarely on the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA is not accommodating to vets, she charged, endlessly delaying appointments with her own son, for example.
Bean was brief, but powerful, in her five minutes of testimony last Wednesday to the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, getting a standing ovation, according to The Star-Ledger of Newark.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/07/nj_mother_of_veteran_who_kille.html
“There are veterans who will tell you that they have had to scrap and right for every VA service they’ve received,” Bean told the subcommittee, The Ledger reported.
She also spoke of the difficulties of using the VA’s website to garner information and get help.
I’ve been following the topic of soldier suicides because of the enormous number of American troops who are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain injury, “shell shock” if you will. Our soldiers are not just suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, they are suffering from brain injury — subtle or traumatic — and one of its typical after effects, depression.
You might not think to link brain injury and depression, but I can tell you that many of my brain-injury clients become clinically depressed. So suicide is always a concern of mine. And the VA has been aware of the suicide issue with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and been trying to address it, as long ago as 2007.
http://veterans.house.gov/Media/File/110/12-12-07fc/12-12-07fcqfrvaresponse.htm
Right now veterans and service members comprise about 20 percent of the 30,000 U.S. suicides each year, The Ledger reported, citing VA statistics. That translated to 334 active-duty service members killing themselves last year.
Bean’s son committed suicide two years ago, and in all fairness to the VA , it really has stepped up its assistance to vets since then. As part of an improved outreach program, the VA established a suicide hotline for soldiers. That 800-number has fielded more than 300,000 phone calls and saved 10,000, The Ledger reported.
And the VA just last weak eased its requirements for veterans to received disability payments for PTSD. We will be blogging more about that topic soon.
But even as the military has tried to help returning veterans, it seems that those efforts are failing. The suicides continue, and some of the Army programs meant to help veterans have come under fire.
For example, The New York Times recently did an expose of the Army’s Warrior Transition Battalian units, which were set up stateside to help veterans who had suffered serious physical and psychological damage in combat.
The Times reported that the veterans in these units are essentially being warehoused, not getting counseling and being tormented by those who watch over them. One vet called the transition units worse than Iraq. That doesn’t sound like a set-up that will make a veteran happy to be home. It sounds like a situation that might make a veteran put a gun to his or her head.
And the military appears to be putting its head in the sand in terms of determining which returning veterans sustained brain damage during their tours of duty. U.S. Today recently reported that the military has failed to comply with a directive that they test soldiers before and after they are in combat for brain injury.
https://waiting.com/blog/2010/06/611.html
If the military knows a soldier has brain injury, it can give him or her psychological help, or medications, to ensure he or she don’t get depressed and take their own lives.
Bean made some sound recommendations to the VA, including suggesting that it establish a group of veterans within the agency to help those just coming home navigate the system’s bureaucracy and red tape. And these veterans can act as a support group for returning troops trying to acclimate themselves to life in the states again.
She also recommended that the VA work more closely with civilian counseling organizations. But the VA doesn’t seem very interested in working with people outside the agency.
For example, the new VA guidelines for PTSD disability mandate that a military doctor, not a civilan physician, certify that a veteran qualifies for benefits. Veterans’ group have criticized that provision in the new disability directive.
