VA secretary hopes suicide prevention task force helps Arizona veterans
Mar 7, 2019, 4:54 AM | Updated: 7:08 am
PHOENIX — President Donald Trump authorized a new task force to develop more ways to prevent suicides among military veterans.
He did it Tuesday by signing an executive order titled “National Initiative to Empower Veterans and End Veterans Suicide.”
Each day in the U.S., 20 veterans, most from the Vietnam War era, take their own lives.
U.S. Secretary for Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie told KTAR News 92.3 FM that a third of veterans in Arizona don’t receive VA services.
“We need help in reaching out to them,” Wilkie said, including in tribal communities and remote areas.
Trump’s order established the Veteran Wellness, Empowerment and Suicide Prevention Task Force, which was directed to find ways to improve coordination, monitoring and executing of ongoing mental health services for veterans.
“It’s just a whole new way of getting past the old one-off doctor-patient visit that depended on the doctor’s availability,” Wilkie said.
The task force will ask for more federal funding to expand VA services, including telehealth video chats between veterans and mental health counselors.
“They don’t have to go into a big hospital, or a big clinic, and be surrounded by people,” Wilkie said, noting that the program works in rural Arizona, where many veterans have limited medical services.
He hopes the task force will help the VA find better ways to treat suicidal ideation among Vietnam vets and other former military personnel.
“It’s the younger generation that’s starting to pile in that we will probably be able to reach faster than we have some of the others,” he said.
