by John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff
Amid a rising tide of suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, lawmakers are increasingly concerned that the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have failed to do enough to prevent such deaths.
Members of both parties are pressing the Obama administration to address what they see as two serious flaws in its campaign to provide help to legions of psychologically troubled people returning from war.
First, they note, tens of thousands of reservists may be falling through the cracks of mental health care because neither the Pentagon nor the VA offers them timely help. And although the VA credited its suicide- prevention television advertisements for playing a role in averting thousands of suicides over more than a year, lawmakers charge that the department inexplicably allowed the ads to go largely unused for nearly all of the following year.
Helping drive congressional concern is a mother from New Jersey, Linda Bean. Her son, Coleman, an Army sergeant afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder, took his own life two years ago after he was unable to get help from the Defense Department or the VA, despite repeated efforts. The bereaved mother told a July 14 hearing of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that more support should be provided to military personnel at risk of taking their own lives.
“Of course we can help them and we can help their families,” she said. “And it is our duty — not theirs—to figure out how.”
Suicides rates among military personnel and veterans have risen considerably since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began.
In 2008, for the first time since recordkeeping began in 1990, the Army’s suicide rate — 20.2 per 100,000 — exceeded that of demographically comparable civilians, which has held steady for years at about 18 per 100,000. In 2009, the Army’s suicide rate hit 21.7 per 100,000, officials said.
Also in 2009, more members of the armed forces took their own lives than were killed by enemy fire in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. At least 381 military personnel took their lives last year — a figure that does not include certain reservists or veterans who left the service. By comparison, 347 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in enemy action in the two wars last year.
The trend has continued this year. The Army announced July 15 that the 145 suicides in its ranks in the first half of this year exceeds the 130 who took their lives in the comparable period last year.
The total for June alone — 32 confirmed or suspected suicides is the highest ever, officials said.
The rate among those who have left the services is similarly high. Eighteen veterans kill themselves every day, said Robert Jesse, principal deputy undersecretary for health in the VA’s Veterans Health Administration, at the July 14 House panel hearing. That figure includes veterans of several U.S. wars, not just Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Data indicate that while civilian suicide rates have remained fairly static over the last 30 years, there has been a deeply concerning increase in the suicide rate among members of the armed forces over the last five years,” Jesse said.
Indeed, the mentally troubled U.S. veterans of recent wars outnumber the armies of most other nations. The Rand Corp. estimated last year that one-third of those who served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from probable traumatic brain injury, major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or some combination of those three. That would be more than half a million people, the study said.
Congress, the Pentagon and the VA have responded with a number of initiatives — including hotlines, media outreach campaigns and increased funding for mental-health services.
But the effect has been limited, and lapses in the government’s monitoring and outreach efforts have outraged a small but growing cadre on Capitol Hill.
Falling Through the Cracks
Sgt. Coleman Bean’s 2008 death has dramatized the issue. Bean was a reservist who had served two combat tours in Iraq and sought care for post-traumatic stress disorder between and after those tours, said Rush Holt, D-N.J., Bean’s congressman, in a July 13 letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki.
Bean was a member of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), a pool of military reservists not assigned to a unit but who can be called on to serve as needed. Because he had no unit after he came home, he could not obtain care from the Defense Department for his disorder, Holt said. By contrast, members of the active military are contacted 90 days after they return home to check on their physical and psychological condition.
Reservists can access VA care, but in Bean’s case, the VA kept postponing his appointments. When VA officials finally called to confirm that they could see Bean, it was a few weeks after he had killed himself, Holt said.
Holt has secured passage of a provision in the last two House defense authorization bills that would require the Pentagon to have trained personnel make contact with reservists like Bean 90 days after they return home. Last year, a House-Senate conference removed the provision from the fiscal 2010 bill because of concerns about its cost, Holt said. This year, it is in the House-passed version of the fiscal 2011 measure (HR 5136). The Senate could take up its version of the bill (S 3454) in the coming weeks.
Holt also has urged Gates and Shinseki to enact the change administratively, just as the administration acted this month without legislation to ease the process for veterans to obtain benefits for post- traumatic stress disorder.
Holt says some 40,000 members of the Army’s Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) who have served at least one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan could be falling through the cracks of the military’s and veterans’ health care systems. He said he believes suicides among such reservists may account for the bulk of military suicides.
The issue is one of the few in Congress to draw bipartisan concern.
“Many of our National Guardsman and Reservists continue to lack a lifeline for help,” said Phil Roe of Tennessee, ranking Republican on the House Veterans’ oversight panel. “These servicemembers are returning to their local communities and are not afforded the level of support that our active component soldiers receive when they return to their respective bases. This is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately.”
Army Col. Robert W. Saum, director of the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, nearly broke down when he told the Veterans’ Affairs panel last week that his son — an Army sergeant like Bean who also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder — had contemplated suicide.
Asked specifically at the hearing about outreach for reservists, Saum said: “We can do better, sir.”
An Army spokeswoman said the service offers a number of support services for reservists.
“IRR soldiers returning from deployment are entitled to the same support and service that any Reserve soldier returning from deployment is entitled to,” she said.
Going Dark After a Year
Lawmakers charge that the other noteworthy setback in combating suicide has been the VA’s on-again, off-again efforts to educate veterans about how to get help if they need it.
For example, in 2008 the VA launched a public-service announcement about suicide starring actor Gary Sinise, which aired 17,000 times on 222 stations. VA officials told lawmakers that those TV spots, together with advertisements on buses and subways, helped keep alive some 7,000 veterans who were considered suicidal.
VA officials said at the hearing that they stopped airing the ads late last year, outraging lawmakers. “How does it help veterans to go dark for more than a year?” asked Harry E. Mitchell, D-Ariz., chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs oversight panel, at last week’s hearing.
VA officials said the department is working on a new TV spot, but it will not be ready for broadcast until later this year.
Janet Kemp, national suicide prevention coordinator at the Veterans Health Administration, said the spots were only one factor in the thousands of averted suicides.
She acknowledged, however, that the VA shares “a big responsibility” for their virtual disappearance from the airwaves, noting that officials did not do enough to urge the stations to continue to air them.
“We know we need to continue to do that,” Kemp said.