A suicidal veteran and a call for help, unanswered

A suicidal veteran and a call for help, unanswered
By LEO SHANE III
Stars and Stripes
Published: April 24, 2012
WASHINGTON

Jacob Manning waited until his wife and teenage son had left the house, then walked into his garage to kill himself.

The former soldier had been distraught for weeks, frustrated by family problems, unemployment and his lingering service injuries. He was long ago diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, caused by a military training accident, and post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the aftermath. He had battled depression before, but never an episode this bad.

He tossed one end of an extension cord over the rafters above and then fashioned a noose.

The cord snapped. It couldn’t handle his weight.

He called Christina Roof, a friend and national veterans policy adviser who helped him years before, and rambled about trying again with a bigger cord or a gun. She urged him to calm down. She sent a message to Manning’s wife, Charity, telling her to rush home. The two of them tried for more than a day to persuade him to get professional help.

He eventually agreed to call the veterans hospital in Columbia, Mo., near his home.

When a staffer at the mental health clinic answered the phone, Manning explained what he had done, and asked if he could be taken into care.

The staffer asked if Manning was still suicidal. He wavered, saying he wasn’t trying to kill himself right then. The hospital employee told him the office was closing in an hour, and asked if Manning could wait until the next day to deal with the problem.

After Stars and Stripes brought Manning’s case to the House Veteran Affairs Committee this month, Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., questioned VA officials about what went wrong in Manning’s case and how to prevent a repeat in the future.

“This is not an isolated case, and that is extremely unfortunate,” he said. “The VA has to get its act together. I don’t think they are prepared for the surge in the number of mental health issues that are coming soon.”

VA officials recently announced the hiring of 1,900 new staffers to help deal with gaps in mental health care and long wait times for appointments. At least 100 of those are expected to be added to suicide prevention efforts.

Miller said that won’t be enough to fight the problem.

“Every person in the department who picks up a phone needs to be retrained,” he said.

Lawmakers will press that issue in coming months with VA officials. Miller said the challenge is getting that message beyond the department’s leadership, down through the bureaucracy to lower-level employees who actually interact with veterans.

“There is no margin of error in this,” he said. “It seems they need to be reminded how critical it is to get this right the first time.”

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