Clint Eastwood’s hit movie American Sniper has brought home to Americans the trauma that many veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars bring back with them. An astonishing 22 veterans commit suicide every day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. A disturbing and growing number are younger vets, many haunted by their experiences and poorly reintegrated into civilian life. In a 2014 survey of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, half said they knew another veteran who had attempted suicide.
Investigator James O’Keefe, whose previous undercover videos have exposed scandals involving ACORN, PBS, and voter fraud, has interviewed people who raise disturbing questions about the VA’s inability to treat the underlying causes of veterans’ emotional problems, as it falls back on a regime of drug therapies that often mask the problems or have serious side effects that make matters worse. A video from his group Project Veritas asks why an increasing number of military graveyards are being filled with people who died at their own hands rather than in combat.
A bill to improve suicide-prevention and mental-health programs at the VA has passed both houses of Congress, but many critics believe it papers over the VA’s real shortcomings — which were put in sharp focus by a 2013 scandal in which 40 vets died at a Phoenix facility waiting for care. Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to resign.
During a recent visit to National Review, former senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) told me that the VA continues to suffer from poor patient care, unreasonably long wait times, and data failures. The medical records are often horribly kept and inadequate. Dr. Maureen McCarthy, deputy chief patient-care-services officer at the VA, told a congressional hearing last year that she had no faith in the numbers her own department provides, so she couldn’t provide an estimate of how long veterans wait for mental-health appointments. Retired Army sergeant Josh Renschler, who has suffered from traumatic brain injury, told the same hearing that he would become confused or lost in chaotic VA facilities and couldn’t find a friendly staff member to help direct him.
Dr. McCarthy testified before the House Veterans Affairs Committee that “we truly believe that one death by suicide is one too many.” She went on to say: “Veterans who reach out for help deserve to receive that help. A veteran in emotional distress deserves to find there are no wrong doors when seeking help.”
But in statements she made to an O’Keefe investigator who was posing as a graduate student researching a paper earlier this month, she cast doubt on just how much the VA is cleaning up its own house.
She suggested that the VA might be helping turn vets into drug addicts:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419284/va-failures-cause-soldier-suicides
Investigator James O’Keefe, whose previous undercover videos have exposed scandals involving ACORN, PBS, and voter fraud, has interviewed people who raise disturbing questions about the VA’s inability to treat the underlying causes of veterans’ emotional problems, as it falls back on a regime of drug therapies that often mask the problems or have serious side effects that make matters worse. A video from his group Project Veritas asks why an increasing number of military graveyards are being filled with people who died at their own hands rather than in combat.
A bill to improve suicide-prevention and mental-health programs at the VA has passed both houses of Congress, but many critics believe it papers over the VA’s real shortcomings — which were put in sharp focus by a 2013 scandal in which 40 vets died at a Phoenix facility waiting for care. Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to resign.
During a recent visit to National Review, former senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) told me that the VA continues to suffer from poor patient care, unreasonably long wait times, and data failures. The medical records are often horribly kept and inadequate. Dr. Maureen McCarthy, deputy chief patient-care-services officer at the VA, told a congressional hearing last year that she had no faith in the numbers her own department provides, so she couldn’t provide an estimate of how long veterans wait for mental-health appointments. Retired Army sergeant Josh Renschler, who has suffered from traumatic brain injury, told the same hearing that he would become confused or lost in chaotic VA facilities and couldn’t find a friendly staff member to help direct him.
Dr. McCarthy testified before the House Veterans Affairs Committee that “we truly believe that one death by suicide is one too many.” She went on to say: “Veterans who reach out for help deserve to receive that help. A veteran in emotional distress deserves to find there are no wrong doors when seeking help.”
But in statements she made to an O’Keefe investigator who was posing as a graduate student researching a paper earlier this month, she cast doubt on just how much the VA is cleaning up its own house.
She suggested that the VA might be helping turn vets into drug addicts:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419284/va-failures-cause-soldier-suicides
