VA's mental health efforts fall short now, won't keep pace in the future

Report: VA's mental health efforts fall short now, won't keep pace in the future
Stars and Stripes
By Leo Shane III
Published: November 11, 2013

WASHINGTON — Veterans Affairs officials will spend more than $7 billion and tens of thousands of hours of clinical time on mental health care this fiscal year, and that won’t be nearly enough, a new report argues.

A new policy brief from the Center for New American Security says that VA mental health efforts do not meet the needs of veterans today and are not enough to keep pace with the wave of veterans expected to hit the health care system in the next decade.

“Historically, veterans’ mental health care needs have risen sharply over time, with peak expenditures occurring 10 to 20 years after the end of war,” the report states. “This was true for the Vietnam War cohort and will likely be true for the post-9/11 combat cohort as well.

“Now is the time for the VA to act decisively to meet these generations’ needs — while it has ample resources to do so, before the demand among post-9/11 veterans spikes.”

The brief comes just a week after VA officials announced they had added more than 1,600 mental health clinicians and 800 peer counselors in the last year.
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