VA, DoD discuss suicide research, screening - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

VA, DoD discuss suicide research, screening

As Veterans Affairs and Defense Department officials gathered at a conference Jan. 12 to discuss what research tells them about suicide in the military, a young Army captain stood up to ask a question:

“What can we do at the unit level? That’s the only reason my commander sent me here.”

He left empty-handed.

“There are certainly things you could do, but there’s nothing evidence-based,” said Col. Carl Castro, a psychologist and director of operations for the Medicine Research Program in the Army’s Medical Research and Materiel Command. “This is a very complex problem. Nobody has the answer.”

Castro called suicide the military’s “No. 2 or 3 priority, with [post-traumatic stress disorder] at No. 1.”

But he did have some ideas. He said screening is “an area we could definitely do better in,” and also said the two suicide-related questions on the current post-deployment health assessment probably are insufficient.

The Army has been working since 2007 on a five-year study with the National Institute of Mental Health and launched about 10 suicide research projects in 2008. Last year, a series of workshops was held to map out a course for research.

Kerry Knox, director of the VA Center of Excellence at Canandaigua, N.Y., has been looking at the issues associated with veterans and suicide and said one of the biggest warning signs seems to be “executive dysfunction” — the inability to plan and execute tasks well, such as remembering appointments or completing a project.

Those problems also have been associated with PTDS, traumatic brain injury and substance abuse. VA is researching suicide rates in veterans who have reported problems with memory, attention or motor skills.

Drug overdoses also have been a factor, so researchers are looking into whether putting medications in blister packs that need to be opened separately for each pill, rather than in a bottle, might deter people from taking several pills at once.

VA also is reviewing the effectiveness of suicide hot lines and prevention coordinators at VA medical centers and evaluating public awareness campaigns to see whether people seek help in greater numbers after seeing a poster or TV announcement.

Castro said part of the problem is that things that work for civilian populations may have the opposite effect on service members because of the military mind-set about what makes them successful or defines them as individuals.

“This is a major problem, and we are tackling it from many directions,” Castro said. “It’s going to take all of us working together to do that.”