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VA forms panels to address suicides

The Veterans Affairs Department has announced two new panels designed to address the number of suicide attempts among patients under VA care, which is running around 1,000 a month.

“There is nothing more tragic than the death by suicide of even one of the great men or women who served this nation,” said VA Secretary James Peake, repeating a statement he has made before Congress. “VA is committed to doing all we can to improve our understanding of a complicated issue that is also a national concern.”

The first, the “Blue Ribbon Work Group on Suicide Prevention in the Veterans Population,” will be made up of five government suicide experts, including:

• Cmdr. Alex Crosby, medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Army Col. Charles Hoge, director of the division of psychiatry and behavior services at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

• Air Force Col. Robert Roy Ireland, program director for mental health policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs.

• Richard McKeon, special advisor for suicide prevention with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

• Jane Pearson, associate director for preventive interventions, National Institute of Mental Health.

The second group will be comprised of nine civilian experts:

• Dan Blazer II, professor of psychology at Catholic University of America.

• Greg Brown, University of Pennsylvania.

• Martha Livingston Bruce, professor in clinical epidemiology and health services research at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

• Eric Caine, chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Rochester.

• Jan Fawcett, professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

• Robert Gibbons, director of the Center for Health Statistics, University of Illinois at Chicago.

• David Alan Jobes, professor of psychology at Catholic University of America.

• Mark Kaplan, Portland State University and the Suicide Prevention Action Network-USA National Scientific Advisory Council.

• Thomas Ten Have, director of the Biostatistics Analysis Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The two committees will provide research and advice for VA programs.

House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Bob Filner, D-Calif., immediately criticized VA’s plans, saying panels and studies “are not action.”

“We know what needs to be done,” Filner said in a statement. “Each and every service member, reservist and Guardsman must be given a thorough and mandatory medical evaluation by competent medical personnel when they separate from military service for PTSD and [traumatic brain injury]. The VA was asked to do this weeks ago.”