Suicidal veterans passed off as someone else's problem

First the Department of Defense discharges servicemen and women under "personality disorder" so they won't have to take care of them or count them. That isn't bad enough. When they commit suicide afterwards or finally come to terms with needing help, they aren't able to get the right kind of help. Still not bad enough. Now a report comes out screaming that the veterans are considered to be someone else's problem again. The VA outsourced many of them into mental health facilities. There they stood in line, waited months for appointments and were forgotten about. When you read the following think about the reports you read here on Wounded Times and then connect the dots because it is a safe bet no one in the government is.

Vets Fall Through VA Mental Health System Cracks
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Aug 05, 2013

In mid-2010, more than 500 veterans were on a waiting list to receive mental health care at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. Sixteen attempted suicide before the VA, overwhelmed by a combination of surging demand and budget cuts, could fit them in.

The VA's solution, once funding improved, was to refer more vets to outside treatment facilities. These groups, most of them nonprofits known in VA lingo as "community service boards," or CSBs, provide outpatient counseling, crisis intervention, substance abuse treatment and other services. Then the VA reimburses them for those services.

By October, 2010, the waiting list had virtually disappeared, VA officials said.

In reality, though, the medical center had merely traded one problem for another, a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. By this time last year, 372 veterans were on a separate list, waiting for treatment from the CSBs.

They waited, on average, three months, according to a recent federal review. At least two who were referred committed suicide without ever getting treatment there.

The Atlanta center serves about 15,000 outpatient mental health patients; at the height of the program, about 4,000 were referred out under a contract that covered 26 CSBs throughout the state.

The VA Office of Inspector General found a referral system rife with problems: too few VA staff to oversee it, payment delays and a breakdown in communication between medical center and the CSBs.

The VA lost track of many veterans referred to the outside clinics. Based on a sample of 85 cases, reviewers estimated that one in five vets never received any care from a CSB or any follow-up by the VA. Some people waited more than a year for an appointment.
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