The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) should replicate an Arizona veterans suicide prevention program nationwide to combat the ongoing suicide rates among the nation’s military service members, said U.S. Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ).
Sen. McSally, along with her home state colleague U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), also urged VA Secretary Robert Wilkie to update them on help for at-risk veterans in Arizona, which they noted has one of the nation’s highest rates of veteran suicides.
“Veteran suicide is not only a VA problem — it’s a community-wide problem,” the senators wrote in a March 12 letter sent to Wilkie, in which they pointed out that the department lacks the ability to locate at-risk veterans and provide mental health treatment to more than 365,000 of Arizona’s 522,000 veterans.
Combatting veteran suicide, wrote Sen. McSally and her colleague, requires collaboration between the VA and Arizona’s communities to identify who is at risk of suicide and to provide assistance.
Arizona’s collaborative prevention program, known as Be Connected, links Arizona’s veteran community and the state’s VA hospitals with regional resources to target such at-risk veterans and provide them with suicide prevention services, according to the lawmakers’ letter.
“The program leverages existing resources both in the community and at the VA to eliminate confusing or duplicative services and increase awareness of (and access to) VA mental health programs,” they wrote.
Sens. McSally and Sinema said the Be Connected program also recently received recognition in President Donald Trump’s March 5 executive order entitled the National Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End Veteran Suicide, which established a cabinet-level task force to develop a nationwide suicide prevention framework for state and local organizations.
“A hallmark of the ‘Be Connected’ program is its focus on placing additional veteran peer supports throughout the community,” the senators wrote. “These added peer supports — combined with existing and additional peer supports at VA facilities — can identify veterans living in both urban and rural areas that have limited access to mental health resources to get them the support they need.”
And because Arizona’s Be Connected program already has served as a model for other states, and made “important progress” in Arizona, the lawmakers wrote that they “believe more progress can be made if we replicate this program nationwide.”
The lawmakers asked Secretary Wilkie to answer several questions about how the VA is working to address veteran suicides, including how it now promotes collaboration across federal, state, local, tribal, private, and non-profit organizations in both urban and rural veteran populations, as well as what guidance the department has provided to local VA hospitals regarding collaboration with outside entities.
They also asked if VA data could explain why Arizona and the western states have had some of the highest veteran suicide rates in the country.