The New York Times (4/14, Steinhauer) reports, “Three veterans killed themselves last week on Department of Veterans Affairs health care properties, barely a month after President Trump announced an aggressive task force to address the unremitting problem of veteran suicide.” The Times says the “executive order was a tacit acknowledgment of what the deaths rendered obvious: The department has not made a dent in stemming the approximately 20 suicide deaths every day among veterans.” The article adds that “veterans are in many ways an amplification of the same factors that drive suicide in the broader American population: a fragmented health care system, a shortage of mental health resources, especially in rural areas, a lack of funding for suicide research and easy access to guns.”
Related Links:
— “V.A. Officials, and the Nation, Battle an Unrelenting Tide of Veteran Suicides, ” Jennifer Steinhauer, The New York Times, April 14, 2019