Veterans Choice Would Be To Get Help They Were Promised

Denial is not a state veterans can afford to live in but that is exactly what is happening all over the country. Congress denies they are actually responsible for all this. Charities deny they have not made enough of a difference considering "new veterans charities has increased relatively rapidly over the past five years or so, growing by 41% since 2008." The DOD has denied they have ended up doing the same thing when we still using failed programs actually feeding the stigma while blocking real awareness of what PTSD is, why they have it and how they can heal. Once all that gets out of the way and the veterans actually try to go for help, this is what they face. So veterans cannot afford to go on waiting while the lose their lives after war.

In rural areas, vets still go without mental health care
One well-intentioned effort has failed
San Antonio Express News
By Martin Kuz, Staff Writer
September 19, 2015

Sabastian Vasquez survived three combat tours to Iraq in as many years. Then he entered another fight, unseen and unrelenting, to subdue the predatory memories of war.

A decade after his honorable discharge from the Marines, Vasquez remains plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder and the residual effects of a traumatic brain injury. In dark moments, he feels as if his mind has turned against him, holding him captive from his true self.

Earlier this year, he drove from his house in Tivoli to the nearest Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic, 35 miles away in Victoria. He inquired about counseling and discovered that one-on-one sessions were not offered. For individual therapy, he would need to travel to a VA facility in San Antonio, 150 miles from home and a five-hour round trip.

“It’s no wonder we have so many veterans offing themselves,” said Vasquez, 32, who grew up in Tivoli, an unincorporated town of fewer than 500 residents not far from Hynes Bay on the Gulf Coast. “You get kind of hopeless when you hit all these obstacles.”

Vasquez occupies a state of limbo with thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans in rural areas of Texas and across the country who struggle to receive behavioral health treatment. Their plight persists almost a year after the VA launched the so-called Choice Card initiative to improve access to medical services for veterans living outside urban centers.

Veterans and behavioral health advocates in South Texas, blaming factors within and beyond the VA’s control, regard the Choice Card program as a well-intentioned illusion. Less abstract is the deepening demand for treatment among those sent to fight in two faraway lands who came back to America trapped inside a war of their own.

“The card isn’t having any effect for vets with mental health problems,” said Gabriel Lopez, president of the South Texas Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans Association, based in Laredo. “It’s not filling the need, and the need is huge.”

The VA hired 3,600 clinicians after federal lawmakers pilloried the agency three years ago over prolonged wait times for mental health care. Similarly, officials announced plans last summer to add 2,700 providers in response to Congress passing the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, which established the Choice Card.

Yet a report in August from the VA Inspector General shows the system continues to suffer from a shortage of clinicians compounded by chronic inefficiency.

The report examined access to psychiatrists throughout the VA network. During a two-year period starting in 2012, the VA added 226 psychiatrists to provide outpatient care, boosting its total to almost 1,800 psychiatrists in that role. (Another 1,000 psychiatrists focus on inpatient care and related duties.)

In contrast to that 15 percent increase, the number of veterans who received outpatient psychiatric care over the same span grew by less than 9 percent, from 799,000 to 869,000.
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