Spokane VA Center Miscounted Suicides

CVA: VA Profoundly Underreporting Vet Suicides?


Spokane VA Center Miscounted Suicides
August 10, 2009
Spokesman-Review

The number of Spokane, Wash.-area veterans who killed themselves in a one-year period is far greater than the Spokane Veteran Affairs Medical Center knew at the time, a VA investigation has found.

The VA's Office of Medical Investigations discovered that from July 2007 through the first week of July 2008, at least 22 veterans in the Spokane VA service area killed themselves, and 15 of them had contact with the medical center.

Spokane VA had previously reported nine suicides and 34 attempted suicides in that time period. All of them had some contact with the medical center.

"The methods and sources routinely being utilized by the medical center to identify veterans who have committed suicide may be inadequate," a report by the VA medical inspectors said.

The suicides came amid heightened concern for the mental health of Soldiers and veterans nationally. In response, VA facilities have strengthened protocols for identifying patients at risk of suicide.

The inspectors' report was released late last week by the Veterans Health Administration to Spokane resident Steve Senescall, after a year spent trying to find out more about the death of his son, Lucas Senescall. The young man's body was found hanging in his Spokane home a few hours after he sought psychiatric help at the Spokane VA.

Although the report was completed on Feb. 4, Senescall did not receive it until late Thursday, hours after The Spokesman-Review called VA headquarters and the office of U.S. Sen. Patty Murray with inquiries about the father's efforts to obtain the information.

On July 7, 2008, Steve Senescall accompanied his son -- who had a history of mental illness, including a previous suicide attempt -- to the medical center's psychiatric ward, where Lucas was seen by Dr. William L. Brown.

Rather than admit Lucas, Senescall said, the psychiatrist had the veteran make an appointment for an office visit in two weeks.

"I want to know why, when he was rocking back and forth in his chair with his hands over his mouth to keep from crying, he sent him home," Senescall said.
Senescall's suicide was the 15th in a little more than 12 months by a veteran who had at least some contact with the Spokane medical center.

The discrepancy between the nine deaths reported earlier by the Spokane VA and the 22 noted in the medical investigators' report came as a result of the medical center comparing death records from the Spokane County medical examiner with records from all three branches of the VA -- the Veterans Health Administration, the Veteran Benefits Administration and the National Cemetery System.

The description of Veteran 2 matches the case of Richard Kinsey Young, a 35-year-old Navy veteran who killed himself in April 2008 after a 16-month struggle with back pain and depression.

The most common complaint was lower back pain, reported by 54 percent of the Soldiers, a previous Spokesman-Review investigation found. Two of the veterans who killed themselves were Iraq or Afghanistan veterans, including Spc. Timothy Juneman, a 25-year-old National Guardsman and former Stryker Brigade Soldier who was injured in a roadside explosion in Iraq.

Juneman hanged himself at his home in Pullman, where he was taking classes at Washington State University after being released from inpatient suicide watch at the Spokane VA in January 2008.

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Spokane VA Center Miscounted Suicides

VA Refused Medical Care to Suicidal Veterans

Why is this still going on? Why are they being turned away when they finally seek help? When they want to live, why are they not helped to stay alive?

July 20, Another Tragic Suicide: VA Refused Medical Care to Suicidal Veteran in Spokane, Washington

Kevin Graman


Spokesman-Review (Washington)

Jul 20, 2008

Lucas Senencall "was begging for help, and they kicked him to the curb," said Senescall's father, Steve Senescall, of Spokane, who drove his son to the hospital and was with him during a brief consultation with [VA psychiatrist William] Brown. . . . Sullivan said the problem could get worse, that the VA is unprepared to absorb 1.7 million returning Iraqi and Afghanistan war veterans if they need care. The health care system currently is treating 325,000 of them; of those, nearly 134,000 are being treated for mental health conditions.

LIVES LOST AT HOME

July 20, 2008, Spokane, Washington - A distraught 26-year-old Navy veteran who had a history of mental illness hanged himself within three hours of seeking help at Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The July 7 death of Lucas Senescall was the sixth suicide this year of a veteran who had contact with the Spokane VA, a marked increase in such deaths.

Last year, there were two suicides among veterans treated at the local VA.

Senescall's death comes amid heightened concern nationwide over the suicide rate among veterans.

VA officials said the medical center continues to take steps to identify veterans at risk of harming themselves, and it is training all employees in suicide prevention. Citing confidentiality rules, officials would not identify the recent fatalities.

But the identity of one other veteran who killed himself this year became public when his family wrote U.S. Sen. Patty Murray in April about concerns with VA mental health care. Spc. Timothy Juneman, 25, a National Guardsman and former Stryker Brigade soldier who was injured in a roadside explosion in Iraq, died March 5.

The same VA psychiatrist, Dr. William L. Brown, attended Senescall on the day he died and Juneman in early January when he was released from inpatient suicide watch at the Spokane VA. Brown had prescribed Juneman several medications, including potent antidepressant, anti-anxiety and antipsychotic drugs.

Parents of both dead veterans have independently raised concerns that the Spokane VA could have done more to save their sons.

"He was begging for help, and they kicked him to the curb," said Senescall's father, Steve Senescall, of Spokane, who drove his son to the hospital and was with him during a brief consultation with Brown.

Said Juneman's mother, Jacqueline Hergert, of Toledo, Wash.: "This thing should never have happened with my son."

Juneman was a combat veteran diagnosed by the Spokane VA with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. He was attending Washington State University. "As soon as those diagnoses were made, somebody should have been standing on a soapbox for him, and nothing was done," Hergert said.

Juneman's body was found in his Pullman home March 25, nearly three weeks after he had hanged himself. He had missed several appointments at the Spokane VA. In records obtained by Juneman before his death, Brown wrote that imminent redeployment to Iraq with the National Guard was a "major stressor" contributing to Juneman's condition, his mother said.

The Spokane VA couldn't contact the 161st Infantry of the Washington Army National Guard to advise officials there of Juneman's diagnosis. Without a patient's consent, the VA cannot inform the Department of Defense about the medical condition of "active veterans" such as Guard and Reserve members.

The week before he died, Juneman received final notification that the National Guard had rescinded a promise not to send him back to Iraq for two years.

Brown has declined through VA officials to comment on either Juneman's or Senescall's case. His superiors at the Spokane VA said they were unable to speak about specific cases because of laws protecting patients' confidentiality.

However, Sharon Helman, the medical center's director, and Dr. Gregory Winter, chief of behavioral health, said each of the six suicides this year was being investigated. As of this year, they said, every hospital employee is undergoing suicide prevention training.

"We have dedicated mental health staff who are very passionate about treating veterans, whatever their diagnosis is, to ensure they receive the quality, safe care that they deserve," Helman said. "When there is even just one suicide we are going to do everything we can to look at our process to determine (whether there is) anything we can do to improve that process and that care."

Winter said that when he came to the Spokane VA medical center seven years ago, his staff numbered about 30. Today, largely as a result of increased attention to the mental health of returning veterans, that number has grown to 52 behavioral health workers, who see about 4,500 patients.

"We save lives every day in the mental health service and all the other services as well, but we are not 100 percent," Winter said. "It is a tragedy when we lose a veteran and we ask ourselves many, many questions when that happens."
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http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/10703

When my husband's darkest days were claiming more and more of his life with each passing day, he finally reached the point when he said "Drive me to the hospital." We headed to the VA hospital in Bedford MA. Driving on Route 128 for the half hour drive, I was afraid for him. The color of his skin had drained. The twitches I was used to seeing were out of control. I prayed all the way to the hospital.

I thanked God that all the years of trying to get him to go to the VA for help had come to that point. When we got there, we waited for hours for someone to see him. We were told there were no beds in the Rehab for him. I feared having to take him home. Being turned away from the hospital would have been too much for him and I knew that if this chance, this glimmer of hope of him being helped, was not fulfilled, it may have been his last chance. I cried. I begged. I talked to a doctor and pleaded for his life. We waited most of the day and they finally admitted him. I knew we got lucky with the doctor having compassion for us.

It was 1993. It had taken me 11 years to get him to those doors. Back then when I contacted the media, The Lynn Item, the Salem News, Boston Globe and Boston Herald, I was told our story was nothing more than "sour grapes" and if he was being turned away, there had to be a reason for it. No reporter wanted to listen, hear our story, or take the time to even investigate what was happening to our veterans back then. All the talk of appreciation for the troops after the Gulf War had come and gone. Vietnam veterans were still paying the price and no one cared. The only time their stories showed up in the newspapers, was when they had committed crimes. Reports of their early deaths were limited to the simple words of "Vietnam Veteran" when most of their lives were ended by suicide. They were suffering in silence and dying in obscurity. Families were falling apart but no one seemed to care.

What is the excuse for all of this now? Do they have any excuses left to use? The reports of this began to be reported in 2004. Only a few were released in 2003 regarding the new veterans and the newly wounded. Because of the media attention, congress has passed Bills to prevent more like Timothy Bowman, Jonathan Schultz and Joshua Omvig from being turned away but here we have two more stories all these years later.

While reports come out on steps being taken and some VA facilities moving mountains to treat the wounded, PTSD is still claiming lives. Veterans are still being turned away when they finally reach out for help begging to stay alive. There is no excuse worthy of them or their families.
The numbers we saw after Vietnam were staggering. What we saw back then, will be multiplied with Iraq and Afghanistan simply because of the nature of this new attitude that redeployments are acceptable even though each redeployment causes a 50% increase risk of being wounded by PTSD. They go back for a 3rd, 4th, 5th deployment. If we were unprepared to care for the wounded 20 years after Vietnam, how long will it take us to get there with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans lives on the line now? Will we ever be? How many more wives, husbands and parents will have to face what I did in 1993, thanking God they reached out for help only to be turned away from the help they need to live?


Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington