More vets getting mental health care, more need care

July 30, 2010
More vets getting mental health care, more need care
Posted by Meredith Cohn

As the wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Veterans Affairs can be sure of something: more people will leave the military in need of long-term medical care – and long-term mental health care.

Robert A. Petzel, undersecretary for health at the VA, was in Baltimore for a meeting of mental health professionals trying to get up to speed on the latest treatments and services, and I was able to quiz him on the latest efforts to care for former service members. Joining in the discussion was Sonja V. Batten, Assistant Deputy Chief Patient Care Services Officer for Mental Health.

They told me that the agency has been working to bolster its staff of mental health professionals – adding 6,000 staffers from the field in the last four years, bringing the total to 20,673.

The VA has also added a suicide prevention hotline, which has taken 293,000 calls in the last two years, referred 35,000 callers to a suicide prevention coordinator and rescued 9,700 of those in immediate crisis.

But the number of those on active duty taking their own lives is, not surprisingly, rising. And many more are coming home from combat distressed.

For post traumatic stress disorders, almost 366,000 vets were treated in fiscal 2009. That number is also rising. There were almost 255,000 treated in fiscal 2006. Of course, during conflicts, there will be more PTSD – as estimated 30 percent of those who served in Vietnam, for example, experienced PTSD and 10 percent of those in the Gulf War did. (About 6.8 percent of Americans will experience PTSD at some time in their lives.)

Officials say a main reason the numbers are going up now is because screening has gotten better. But certainly more vets need care.

In fiscal 2009, more than 1.4 million vets received care from the VA for a mental health problem, up from close to 1.2 million in fiscal 2006.
read the rest here
More vets getting mental health care, more need care