Posted on 03/13/2016 7:10:12 AM PDT by huldah1776
A division of the Department of Veterans Affairs tasked with fixing up the VA's broken veteran suicide hotline has dropped roughly 1.4 million phone calls from veterans since fiscal year 2015, a VA whistleblower told the Washington Examiner.
That high number of abandoned calls is raising questions about whether the VA is doing all it can to fix up the suicide hotline, which has been criticized as the latest part of the VA that is failing veterans.
Scott Davis, a whistleblower and program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta, noted that the VA's Health Resource Center is slated to take over the VA's suicide hotline. But according to data provided by Davis, the Health Resource Center is dropping hundreds of thousands of calls from veterans each year.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
For visual learners...FoxNews Video interview with Veteran Pete Hegseth
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4798349682001/report-suicide-hotline-dropped-14-million-calls-from-vets/?#sp=show-clips
chatted with Stop Soldier Suicide and they are trying to get legislation passed to create transition programs for those leaving the service.
To hell with ALL those who work at & run the va, & I damn them ALL to Tardis [the lowest part of the Greek Hells] FOREVER!
How about all government workers having to go to a VA center for health care?
Lived in Spfld where son enlisted in Corps in 2010. He’s out and doing well. Semper Fi!
My comment remains the same, to HELL with ALL gov’t employees who work at & run the va!
Knowing all the foreign doctors that work at the various VA hospitals, I won’t doubt if they have outsourced their suicide hotline to India, or some other country like that.
It took some effort to figure out what this article actually says. They are not saying that the suicide hotline dropped 1.4 million calls in roughly two years. Instead, they are saying that the VA’s Health Resource Center - which presumably takes all kinds of calls - has this problem with phone service.
The conclusion one is expected to draw seems to be that this organization is not the best choice to manage a suicide hotline.
I was just thinking. If there is an overload of calls, for suicide calls they should be able to automatically be forwarded to other Vet Suicide hotlines, say for each branch of the service. The Marines have their own, so if the call isn’t answered the system could automatically be transferred to that hotline. But what do I know. Interservice coop should be done for this.
If it is non-emergency, there are millions of vet advocates who could take the other calls. Just speaking to someone who could possibly prevent the spiral of rejection and hopelessness into a future suicide call.
Ah, should have translated it. And you are correct. Seems the backlog of regular issues is causing an avalanche (not snowballing).
“Went down to see the VA man.”
They are open from 9am to 4:30pm.
They don’t have their phone number in the local phone book.
You can call the national number. They will take a message.
I had to tell the armed guard what my business was and who I was going to see. The armed guard made me sign in and print my name and write who I was going to see and my time in and out.
I had to show the armed guard my identification
There is no cash in this building. There are no precious artworks.
There are government employees.
And they have to have an armed guard.
Why?
Intimidation.
“Yeah, you served your nation and the American people for 30 years, but I, I!, a government clerk, will decide what you will or won’t get! Kneel! Kneel before me you Veteran pig! Yes, you were shot at, but look at how I am put out by having to talk to Veteran pigs like you! You want to yell at me? I’ll have the security guard toss you out and then I will write “belligerent” on your file and we’ll see what you get!”
Vets vote Republican in large numbers.
Vet Hanged Himself After the VA Claimed He Never Served. Now His Mother Speaks Out
I was recently contacted by Marcia Snyder, an Army mom who lost her son, Sgt. Douglas Snyder, to suicide. She saw a piece I’d written about the recent death of veteran Thomas Young, who, after no one at the VA’s suicide hotline answered his call, decided to take his own life.
I had the honor of listening to her son’s story and the events that followed.
Marcia recalled her son as a “handsome young man” who would stop in front of her china hutch and flex his muscles in the reflection of the glass. Prior to joining the Army, Marcia said Doug was very social, sometimes so outspoken it would even get him in trouble.
But Doug changed after serving two tours in the 82nd Airborne.
Marcia described one event that had a profound impact on her son:
“Doug was one of the first deployed when the war began. The sergeant that was his buddy–he always referred to him as ‘Sarge’–he was captured during their second tour. They found him the next day or so, and he’d been pulverized. They stomped him to death. That affected Doug deeply. He was the one that carried his body back out. Little by little by little he would verbalize things that happened over there.”
When Doug came home, things seemed normal at first, but over time, he began to deteriorate. Marcia noted how her son seemed apathetic about school and job hunting:
“I began noticing something wasn’t right. Doug was the kid in high school that would always say too much and end up in trouble. That changed.”
Blackouts
After an arrest for theft, it became clear that Doug wasn’t himself:
“Around 2008, he was arrested. His wife woke up during the night, the front door was open, and he was gone. He went jogging through the neighborhood in the middle of the night, and somebody had left a purse in their car, and he took it. He had no recollection of that. At the time, I didn’t understand blackouts. I was upset and angry.”
Having difficulty adjusting to normalcy, Doug would call a veterans hotline to speak with other vets to whom he could relate. He began abusing substances: marijuana, Soma, Xanax, Vicodin. He would say he “needed them.”
Marcia told me two of her son’s more disturbing blackout incidents:
“One time he stood in my kitchen, took a knife and cut his hand with it. He then proceeded to wipe blood on the walls. I have never been so frightened in my life.
Doug disappeared one night. I heard a knock on my door at 6:30 in the morning, and it’s him. He was covered in insect bites. He said ‘Mom, help me.’ And I said ‘My god, what happened?’ He had been camping out at the VA. He walked from the VA to my home, which was about 35 miles, and he said ‘I thought I was in Iraq. I had to hide. I think I laid on an ant hill.’”
The VA
“I took him to the VA, and the doctor actually said ‘This is the funniest story I’ve heard all week.’ They put him in for two or three days.”
The problems with the Houston VA only got worse from there:
“Each time I went to the ER, I was told, ‘We can’t speak to you. You have to sign a paper.’ I had already signed one, and they continuously lost them. If he would disappear, I would call, and it would be ‘We can’t talk to you without the papers.’ But they would just lose them. The VA would blow us off. Put him back in. Maybe keep him a couple days. It was a repeat cycle.”
Medication
“He had 15 bottles of medication. Two were anti-depressants, three were anti-psychotics. The rest were seizure medications, Beta blockers, tranquilizers, muscle relaxants, and pain meds.
I’m an RN. You don’t take two different doses of anti-depressants at the same time. He said he didn’t know how to take his pills. Meanwhile, the blackouts were increasing.”
Eventually, Doug was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in 2009.
Suicide
It was in November of 2009 that everything changed:
“Doug was arrested in November–I still don’t know why. He called me from the jail on a Sunday, and said that the blackouts were really bad. Monday, we talked to him, and he was screaming and yelling, and I got angry, and I hung up on him. To this day, I can’t forgive myself for that.
Tuesday evening, he told the jailers that he was a vet, and he was having an increase in blackouts. He said ‘I think I just had one cause I fell and hit my head.’ They told him he was just a liar. They said ‘We have to confirm this with the VA.’ So they called the Houston VA to get confirmation of records. The Houston VA sent back a paper that said Doug had never served in the military. There were no records.
Doug was again told he was a liar. The last thing he had left was the pride of having served, and they took that from him. Ten minutes later, he hanged himself.”
After the suicide, a detective and a Texas Ranger met with the family. They claimed the lack of VA records proved that Doug had never served, and the burden was on Marcia and Doug’s siblings to prove otherwise:
“So we went to the VA, and they couldn’t find the records. They said ‘He’s not in the computer.’
Four hours later, we got the records.”
For years, Marcia has tried to find resolution, to no avail:
“I tried contacting legislators, and President Obama, and no one seemed to care. I recently place a call to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs and spoke briefly with a young man. I attempted to explain that I would like to give input regarding some changes that need to be made. He asked me when my son died and I told him in 2009. He snickered and said that was too long ago to make any difference.”
While I spoke to Marcia Snyder, she wondered aloud why I’d care to hear her son’s story. I remarked that it’s a shocking story that needs to be told. She quickly replied “No, it’s not. It’s happening everywhere.”
When the VA scandal first broke in 2013, and it was fresh to the majority of the American people, mothers like Marcia Snyder had already been experiencing the broken system for years. As I noted in the Thomas Young piece, this horrific problem still persists with little being done to change it.
I’d like to thank Marcia for telling her son’s story, and hopefully, it will serve as a reminder that mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends and family are still fighting for their lost and damaged loved ones, and this will not stop until the problem is properly addressed once and for all.
forgot author and date
By Frank Camp march 12, 2016
The VA started knowingly declining service to Vets as far back as 1972 when they started their bed reduction program that continues to this day. I had been warning faux news before the VA story even broke. The day it did break I mailed them (might have tweeted them) that there was much more to this story for them to dig deeper. Did they listen? Nope. Kind of like that stupide Viet Nam Vet who I encountered in a Wal Mart selling Humana. I asked to get information about Humana he asked why. I told him I was 100% svc connected and wanted to save my life by getting away from the VA. This was after I went to the VA ER with 104 degree temp given a bottle of Ibuprofen and told to come back on Monday if my symptoms hadn’t changed. Luckily I decided to go to public hospital where no more tha 2 hours later I had emergency surgery for an infection that could have cost my life. That stupid Vet yelled at me in front of the store at Wal Mart saying how the VA was the best thing since the Civil War. It may have been at one time. Its not a full service health care. They can’t do things that a normal health care provider could. It took me over 10 years to get them to write a letter so I could go back to school. I had eventually had to get a Congresswoman to investigate in order for them to write it. I despise the VA although I have no choice but to use them. There are good things about them like everything but I no longer have to commit suicide, I just need to walk into the nearest VA if I want to have it done for me.
**went to the VA ER with 104 degree temp given a bottle of Ibuprofen and told to come back on Monday if my symptoms hadn’t changed. Luckily I decided to go to public hospital where no more tha 2 hours later I had emergency surgery**
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I can relate to that. I needed surgery to remove a 30yr old shell fragment from my leg. The VA surgeon wanted to remove it fast because my system was growing tissue around it at a fast pace trying to reject it, about golf ball size. Ended up in a non-VA hospital to get it out fast since VA would not schedule surgery faster than 11 months. The growth had grown to fist size by then with the schrapnel snugly buried inside. Something wrong with the VA system when you need to have combat injuries attended to by a non-military hospital.
Has the bed reduction program been reported here as a thread? I’ll see what I can find online, too.
You can find the information here in a power point from the San Diego VA.
http://www.sandiego.va.gov/docs/publicaffairs/40Year.ppt
On slide 11 they allude to it by saying:
“In 1972, there were 811 authorized hospital beds. Now there are 256, with the decrease in beds attributed toward a shift from mostly inpatient care in 1972 to mostly outpatient care in 2012.”
You can also find this in the history of the VA. This is a nationwide program as I experienced it in Durham, Dayton, Cincinnati and Indianapolis.
Thanks! I was wondering if the HMO change to shorter hospital stays and out patient clinics came before or AFTER the VA agenda. They all work together anyway, right?
No. The VA is a total separate entity of all its own.
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