Troubled vets need help sooner, lawmakers told

Finally someone started to ask why so many would need to contact the Suicide Prevention Hot Line in the first place! As they have talked about the success of this no one seemed willing to ask why so many would be brought to that point instead of helped before it got that bad. I've been screaming about this since the reports of the number of calls began to surface. It just didn't make sense to see so many calling and so few "rescued" in the end. It's good the hotline is there but we need to notice how huge of a problem we have when so many have to reach the brink.

Troubled vets need help sooner, lawmakers told
Army Times
By Kelly Kennedy - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jul 14, 2010 18:04:51 EDT

Even as Veterans Affairs Department officials offered testimony that 10,000 people have been saved by VA’s suicide hotline, veterans themselves said help should come long before a person needs to make that call.

“The suicide hotline is too much of a last alternative,” said Melvin Cintron, an Army veteran who served as a flight medic in Desert Storm and in aviation maintenance in the current war in Iraq. “Either you don’t have enough of a problem and you can wait for weeks for an appointment, or you have to be suicidal.”

Cintron spoke Wednesday before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s oversight and investigations panel.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/07/military_suicide_va_071410w/